To Stand Against the Wrath of Hell
by Chris Kenworthy
Summary: With a little help from some unexpected friends, Angel finds a way to stop Wolfram and Hart's demon Horde from destroying Los Angeles and stands up to one of the Senior Partners - but somebody else has to pay the price for his destiny.
1. Chapter 1

So, there we were. The final four. Gunn... my 'home boy', my rock, my left hand man for... what, going on four years now? Charles Gunn, badly wounded in several places, moving towards death's door, yet standing up, that Carthaginian axe in his hand, because we needed every pair of arms that we could get.

Spike, the thorn in my side, the bane of my existence... and my unlikely partner in destiny. He was keeping his hands free for now, the way he always liked to do at the beginning of a big fight, but I knew that he had plenty of gear hidden underneath that coat of his... just waiting to see what was the right weapon to grab and the right time to put it to use.

On the other side of me... Illyria. This strange, **bizarre** ancient demon who had taken over the body of one of my best friends, and who had tried to kill us all at least twice. But she (it?) had proven herself on the team over the past few weeks, and she grieved Wesley's death more keenly than any of us. She wanted to do some violence, and that was a point in her favor right now. We were gonna _need_ some. She wasn't using any weapons at all - she never had, and didn't need any. She had forged Fred Burkle's body into a living arsenal.

And finally myself, of course, Angel. Liam. Whatever the hell you wanna call me. I hefted the broadsword in my right hand, testing its weight. Was I still a champion? I guess I was, that was what this whole thing had been about. Getting back to the good fight. But I didn't feel much like a champion now. Just a very scared vampire with a soul, getting ready to fight against overwhelming odds.

It took only an instant to consider what I knew about those enemies already arrayed against us. Wasn't sure if the dragon had heard what I said about wanting to kill it, but it didn't seem at all inclined to give me a chance just yet. Wyrms of that length are usually pretty intelligent, and it must have been instructed to fly high and wait... wait to run down and catch fugitives from the battle, or until a situation arose that called for decisive air support. For an instant, I was tempted to make a break for it and try to draw the dragon to me, but I resisted the impulse. There were enough other things to worry about for now.

Starting with the battalion of trolls. Gunn had been exaggerating, of course, when he'd talked about 'the thirty thousand on the left.' You simply couldn't fit that many beings of such size into one location... not when your locations are as limited in size as Los Angeles alleyways. As far as I could hear or see, there were about four hundred Tarralon demons on foot within two blocks of here, but I'll just call them trolls because that's easier. Still not a particularly good start, considering that they outnumbered us a hundred to one and each were about as strong as Spike or myself, and right now even Illyria wasn't too far beyond us. Through the crowds of trolls marching towards us from three directions, I could see some sort of shadowy figures astride huge four-legged creatures - couldn't make out if the riders were more trolls or some other kind of enemy, but I guess I'd find out soon enough if I lived that long. There were also scores of Gnastis demons... spider-ey things, about as large as Saint Bernard dogs, frighteningly quick to attack.

And that was about all I could figure out in time before the first wave of trolls was hitting us. "Let's do this!" I slashed out fiercely with my blade and caught one by surprise, right through the neck arteries. But there were literally dozens more right behind him, and no room for strategy... just instinctive, primordial struggle. Spike took out a few with throwing knives, then appeared to reconsider and go back to bare-knuckles, while Illyria began to throw the trolls into each other as if they were bowling balls and pins. I remember elbowing one in the lower chest, then getting my legs swept out from under me and having to spend several long moments fighting off the arachnids...

#

The rider wasn't paying enough attention to me... he was entirely focused on Gunn, who was almost too weak to stand. This particular rider was, indeed, a troll - an officer among them, perhaps, and his steed was a beast that looked like it was a cross between a tiger and a giant snail... I'm not going to explain that one any further because trust me, the more detail I might tell you, the more disgusting it would sound.

My own reserves were starting to feel low at the moment, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Using my vampire strength and agility to the utmost, I leapt at the troll, knocking him clear off of his mount, grabbed the sidearm at his belt - a straight, pointed steel skewer about eleven inches long, and rammed it up his nose into the tiny brain. Before he even stopped convulsing I was back up and lecturing Gunn. "You don't take a breather, the next troll isn't gonna have to lay a hand on you," I growled above the din of the fight. _stomp_-ed another Gnastis that had gotten bold and too careless. "You'll drop dead all by yourself."

"This is Ragnarok," Gunn protested. "The last battle: there ain't no time outs." But he suffered me to lead him over to a low trash cabinet that ran along the fence, and he sat down on it.

Suddenly, a ringing blow concussed the side of my head. Spiked mace, I thought, and sprung back up to my feet, only to realize that a razor-sharp longsword was cutting into the side of my neck. I focused on the face of the individual holding the sword... not a troll, but a slender, masculine figure who seemed to be cloaked in the deepest darkness. Wound up to take a strong punch at said face, only to realize that it was too late. Two trolls were grabbing my right arm, and gnastis locked onto my lower legs, weighing them down. I grabbed for the skewer with my left hand, but an arrow suddenly pierced it, pinning it to the wall.

This was clearly a co-ordinated attack on me. I glanced around quickly, but no-one was in a position to help out. Gunn was trying to fight off the trolls and arachnids as best he could. Illyria, too, was busy with trolls, nearly a dozen of them, and she seemed to be tiring a little; there was no way she could fight free in time even if she realized what was happening to me. And Spike was battling with two other warriors of the deepest darkness, each of them mounted upon a midnight black horse.

Meanwhile, the blade was starting to slice deeper into my neck, and there was nothing I could do about it. Once it sliced apart the Jevson's conduit, that mystical channel in vampire physiology that connected the brain to the heart, I knew that I would feel no more pain. My body would instantly turn to dust There was no-one else left to rescue me, not Lorne or Connor, who had hopefully gotten back out safely... not Wesley, who was dead, or Lindsay, whose death I had ordered. How many inches were left? Three... two... one...

I felt it happen more than saw it... the pain was so intense that tears were streaming out of my eyes at that point, I have to admit. A rush of heat and wind, a force that brushed the dark swordsman, and his blade, away as casually as if they been autumn leaves. A loud bang. I blinked furiously, trying to regain sight,

Ten feet away from me, bits and pieces of the dark warrior lay scattered about the flaming bodies of at least four troll warriors and two arachnids. In that instant, I suddenly threw the restraining trolls over top of me and flung one of the arachnids away from my leg... and suffered through a siege of dizziness as my head, still almost half severed, wobbled to and fro a bit. I closed my eyes for a moment, which seemed to help.

"What the hell would you do without me?" There was an instant of pain in my left hand as the arrow was pulled from it, and the feel of hands pulling the other gnasti demons away from my legs and feet. I opened my eyes and saw Eve standing there, a small open bottle still carried in the crook of her elbow. It must have been a fireball vial, I realized, and it was the only thing that had saved my life. It... and the mysterious young woman who had loosed it.

"Don't ask me why the hell I did it," she groused, and headed over to help defend Gunn. She had taken the skewer, either from me or from the ground if it had fallen, and was using it with a good deal of chutzpah if no astounding skill. "I'd take better care of that noggin if I were you," she called back to me, stabbing out at a troll who evaded the attack easily.

"Do you have any other little tricks like that fireball up your sleeve, Eve?" I yelled back, picking up a fallen sword and looking for a good target.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

Things were getting dire and desperate indeed, I could tell that much at first sight. The enemy were starting to take our measure, to hone attacks to the weak point of each member of my team, and there was still no lack of their numbers. In fact, a few new types of combatant seemed to be showing up, several of them apparently just waiting to make their move. A fifteen foot tall ogre. A small squad of walking skeletons, perhaps nineteen of them. Two creatures with the head, arms, and torso of a humanoid and the body of a fifty-foot-long snake... (now where had I seen something like that before?) An entire cadre of seven blind assassins, each moving with complete and deadly precision.

Gunn really didn't seem to have much fight left in him, and if he didn't get medical help soon, the wounds he'd already suffered would probably kill him. Spike was almost as knocked up as I was... I think one of the shadow warriors had used a mystical atack on him that worked much the same way as gunshots... which couldn't kill him, but he was fighting through system shock and nearly overwhelming pain. Illyria seemed battered and torn around the edges too... her blue armor showing visible cracks and dents in places, and a cut on her face streaming purplish blood. She was also favoring one leg.

I checked to make sure that my neck was starting to seal itself together again, then dived back into the fray once more, dispatching a few careless trolls, and attempting a frontal assault on the blind people, which turned out to be quite a mistake, since they drove me back against the wall, bleeding in a dozen places. I was starting to seriously wonder if they'd just slash my head off or pull out a sharp wooden spear and dispatch me that way when...

All of a sudden, a huge sheet of the fence behind me was torn away, almost casually, and a familiar figure stepped through, A tall, mostly human figure, muscular and handsome... "Groo!" I panted out. "What are you doing here?"

"We have come to help!" Groo replied in that overly earnest, B-movie dialog that I always remembered him using. Suiting action to word, he swung his weapon, a long one-sided blade with a rounded heavy head, and suddenly one of the assasins was missing his weapon, and her arm halfway up to the elbow. That gave the rest of them pause, and while the cadre was focused on the new guy I got a good shot of my own in, opening up a wide gash to a blind man's collarbone.

"We?" I asked, parrying off a furious counterattack, no, make that two counterattacks. A third tagged me, and I winced - Groo helpfully bashed the third attacker on the head with the blunt side of his weapon, creating a satisfying sound if no truly crippling damage. Blade of my sword was a cure for that.

When I got a chance to look back, a few other people were climbing through the makeshift passageway that Groo had opened. "Aaron Seymour, who hears the words of the Powers," Groo mentioned when he wasn't busy hacking and bashing... the assasins had apparently withdrawn to tend to their wounds, but the snake demons, ogres, (when had more than one of them shown up?) and skeletons were eagerly taking their place.

There was a young man, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, obviously freaked out but still proud and determined. He stayed away from the fighting as best he could, though a thick short staff or club of some sort was hanging from his belt, and rushed over to check on Gunn - probably for the best, on both counts. A woman in her later thirties, attractive and self-possessed, with light brown hair, pulled out a plain rapier to guard Groo's flank, and then did a double-take when she realized that a skeleton warrior was stepping up to challenge her. There was obviously no way to hurt the thing by stabbing it or whacking it with the light, edgeless blade.

I tossed the heavy, curved sword I had been using over to the woman, and picked up an abandoned pole arm, the better to fend off orges and snakemen. "And Natasha Devon, watcher's council," Groo continued after pounding three skeletons into splinters.

That got my attention. "New council?"

"Old council, on detached duty for the new," Natasha said, wheezing slightly with the effort of wielding the heavy weapon, but acquitting herself pretty well. "You must leave this place, all of you, or you will perish!"

I had to admit that she had a point, but... "If we run, they'll chase us down - if the legion isn't on the other side of this fence, they're on their way." I grunted myself, trying to thrust the point of this weapon through an ogre's head lance-style, but it just bounced off a thick layer of bone. "Then there's the dragon, and..." Suddenly I started objecting and began to plan. "Huddle up!" I called to the gang, and quickly they gathered round, Spike, Illyria, Groo and I facing outwards to drive off the enemies that tried to interrupt war council.

"Gunn, Eve, you go with Groo and his friends. Get them to safety."

"Our only safe refuge..." Aaron interrupted. "W- we can access it but once. Everyone has to come together, at the same time."

I groaned in frustration. "Okay. Protect them, nearby. Where do we have to be?" Natasha whispered cross-streets. "Spike, Illyria: keep up the fight here. Did you need that little surprise at the fell brethren headquarters?"

Spike realized that I was talking to him and stopped still in surprise. Groo had to block a troll punch from connecting with his head. "Uhh... no, I didn't."

"Good. Set it up here, then. Draw as many of W-R-H's people into the area as you can..." Now when did we start calling WolfRam & Hart that? "...and then both of you splitsky and Spike sets it off. Meet up with Groo and Natasha as soon as you can."

"What about you?" Eve asked.

"He's gonna draw Smokey-wing's fire," Spike guessed, pointing at the dragon, who was glaring balefully down at us from a building ledge.

#

I jumped up onto an old Chevy someone had abandoned in this alley, crossed it from back to front in two steps, and somersaulted off of it, aiming for a spot thirty-five feet away that seemed to be temporarily free of troll. Behind me, I knew, Spike and Illyria were strutting their combative stuff with new hope, and the rest were getting ready to run as soon as the dragon started to chase after me. I figured that I had to get to the far end of the alley before that would happen.

Groo and his friends had supplied me with some new weapons quickly - a brand new mace that looked to be good for troll whacking, and a truesilver cutlass that I was saving for the wyrm itself. Speaking of which... _whack_. _smack_! _whaaaack_! Troll squiths.

And then two of the blind assassins stepped out of the shadows to either side, right in front of me, eager for a quick rematch. _Dammit_, I did **not** have time for this! And suddenly... Thwickk! Thwickk! Each of them were staggered, with a crossbow bolt in mid-thigh.

I turned around long enough to see Gunn standing just on the other side of the chevy, holding a triple-action crossbow with one bolt still cocked. I spared half a wave for him and took off. The dragon let out a huge roar and flew down towards me. The remaing trolls and arachnids anywhere near me, and even the wounded assassins, moved in the opposite direction. Nobody else wanted to get in the way of this hell-lizard once it got started huh?

I didn't know that much about fighting dragons, but I thought I knew this much: never give them a chance to use their momentum against you, and don't give them time to plan their strike if you can help it. I rolled to the side as it flew in for a landing, set the mace aside, drew the sword, (glowing with a brilliant blue light now,) and slashed out at a wing. The flying beast honked in pain and shock, and slashed at me with a claw. The fight was joined.

As I struggled with the dragon, amazingly enough, part of my mind started going over what I'd accomplished so far. Definitely people had been hurt, and fine people had lost their lives, and I'd have to answer for that. But there's been a lot of good done. I honestly don't believe that Wolfram and Hart had as many good operatives in the rest of the world as they had right here in Los Angeles, within the Circle of the Black Thorn. This city had been a fortification for them, safe ground within which they could take sanctuary and from which they launched missions elsewhere on planet Earth. They'll try to regroup and rebuild, but that isn't the sort of thing that can be done quickly, and they'll have to divert resources from other places and other worlds, which is good news for those otherworlds. And they're diverting even more resources, and pretty hastily, to summon this army here to beat the crap of us, which is hopefully even better, (despite the fact that more innocents might be killed by the horde, especially if we manage to escape them.)

Besides... even if it doesn't matter, if the resources of the Senior Partners are effectively infinite, at some point it's the only thing left to do to call them out and take the wrath. It's better than sitting in a hole, terrified to do any good for the sake of calling hell down upon yourself. I've called the Senior Partners' hand now. Only time will tell whether it's a bluff or not, or somewhere in between.

The fight between myself and the dragon had wandered down the city block by now, and I had to face the fact that I wasn't gonna kill him here and now. Though my neck had healed a bit, my hand was still hurting like hell, fresh blood dripping from a new gash near my shoulder, about a dozen other flesh wounds, and I was up against an enemy that outnumbered and outweaponed me ten to one. Still, as much as I'd have liked to, killing him right then was not the real plan.

Have to choose the moment carefully, I thought to myself, and slashed at the beast's snout, scoring a hit substantial enough to drive it back for a few seconds... I stood in front of it, grabbed a small amulet in my pocket, and muttered 'invoke.'

Then I turned around and ran like hell.

The amulet? It had been another little glamour charm I stole from the Wolfram and Hart office... at the same time as I took the other, more sophisticated one, that I used to convey the plan to the guys, right there in my office, without anyone noticing. The second one was a simpler model, but for a minute or two the dragon would see and smell me, standing right there in front of it, surrounded by an aura of power. I hoped the wyrm would take pretty much that long or longer to realize that I hadn't been rendered unattackable; I just wasn't there.

As I rushed past the alley, giving it a wide berth, there was a huge explosion. Good, Spike carried off his part in the plan. I was confident that he and Illyria had gotten out of the blast zone okay.

#

By the time I got to the area that Natasha had mentioned and found them, Spike and Illyria had beaten me there. However many minions of hell had been taken care of in the explosion, there were still plenty of them about at the moment, but no alarm had been sounded to the hiding place that Groo had selected. (Which presumably meant that anyone who discovered it had been taken care of.) I had to avoid and fight my way through quite a few troll parties on the way, though... they were obviously on a search pattern for us. That took some more energy and left me with a few more superficial cuts and scrapes... getting to a safe haven would be not a moment too soon.

"How are we doing?" I asked breathlessly, and saw Gunn, who was lying very still, his head in Eve's lap. "Is he..."

"He's still alive, and stable, but he's lost a lot of blood," Eve reported simply. "Hopefully once we get to the haven they'll be able to help him."

"All right." I turned to Groo and Natasha. "Where's the safe house?"

"A long way across town, physically," Natasha started, "but we're not going in the front door because then the enemy would probably track us. There is a medium-range transportation portal..." she pointed, "right over there." I could make out the black wooden shape, a small doorway, on the outer wall of the building across the street. "I have the key word that will activate the doorway for twenty seconds, and then disable it completely. No-one will be able to reconnect it with the safe haven unless they know precisely which magical formula to inscribe upon it."

"And how do we know that Wolfram and Hart's bright boys won't be able to figure out the formula?" Spike asked.

"They'd need to know the precise location of the safe haven first," Aaron put in. "Along with the runes that are inscribed upon the master gateway within." I'd forgotten about Aaron, but he'd been helping Gunn and Eve as they fled the alley, for which I was grateful.

"All right," I decided. "Better sooner than later." I looked around - the street seemed reasonably free of trolls. "Twenty seconds - that's more than two seconds for each of us, but still not a hell of a lot of time. If a troll or two manage to follow us in, we can take care of that there."

"Wait a second," Spike piped up. "Why exactly does liason-girl get a free pass into the secret club hideout? Maybe this is the plan, for her to betray us to the big boys, maybe earn back her immortality contract!"

"Hey!" Eve put in. "I saved Angel's life back there, and this is the payback I get, outrageous accusations?"

"Yes," I told her softly. "Okay, Spike, your objection is fair... and I say we put it to a quick vote, original targets only. Gunn can't vote at the moment, so that's you, me, and Illyria. Best two out of three win." I wasn't sure how this would go, but I went ahead with it. "My vote is to trust her... I really believe that she wants to change. To redeem herself."

"You would," Spike mumbled under his breath.

"I 'vote' that she can rot out here," Illyria declared. "She stinks of the wolf, the ram, and the hart. They are her blood, her essence. We can _not_ trust her!"

Eve turned imploringly to Spike. "Please... I won't betray you to the Senior Partners in any way. If they find me out here they'll know that I helped you..."

Spike's face twisted in indecision. "I want to trust you, doll. But the stakes are too high..."

"Wait a second," Aaron interrupted. "How about, as a compromise, we take her with us and don't let her out or communicate outside? That way, she'll be safe and she won't have an opportunity to betray you."

Spike, Illyria, and I exchanged a glance. "Why didn't we think of that?" Spike muttered. "All in favor?"

Illyria carried Gunn's unconscious form as we rushed across the street, Spike kept a close eye on Eve, and I watched young Aaron to make sure that he'd be okay. Just as we were getting close to the doorway, though, a darkness warrior riding on a horse appeared out of nowhere, literally. One instant there was nothing there, and then he standing right in front of me. Spike and I shared a long look. Certainly letting this joker slip into the safe haven would be a serious problem, if not disaster.

I pushed Aaron ahead of me towards Groo. "I'll take care of him," I called to Spike and Illyria. "You get our friends inside safely."

"I should be the one to stay," Illyria announced. "I am stronger and have a much more precise evaluation of time. You are quite capable of taking Charles Gunn and carrying him through the door."

Youch. As... well, as emasculating as that was, I really couldn't argue with her. The wounds that I'd seen Illyria take earlier, she seemed to have shaken off already. Her blue armor was smooth and unbroken, her movements lithe and agile. (And I thought **I** was a quick healer!) Gunn was quickly transferred between us - Natasha had already spelled the portal open and people were starting to file in. I looked back - the shadow rider was trying to charge past Illyria, but she stood into his way and knocked the horse down with a single punch. And then I dived through the portal.

"Eleven, twelve, thirteen..." Spike was counting out. "...seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twent..." Illyria's body slipped through the white gateway just before it blinked back to dull gray - there was no time for anyone to follow her through. Actually, something tried - there was bit of a horse hoof sitting near the bottom of a gateway.

"I'll dispose of this ritually..." Natasha said, picking the chunk of nail up. "Otherwise it might be able to mutate into a demonic form capable or leaving the haven and reporting on its location."

Somewhat belatedly I started to look around. The place was some kind of an underground bunker. "By the way... who's in charge here?" I asked. There were a few other people (and demon species that I recognized as generally harmless) waiting around and looking at the new arrivals.

"Angel?" A beautiful woman with curly red hair pushed through the crowd and hurried up to me. "Where's Wesley?"

Not a question I wanted to answer right now... and where did I know this woman from? Where did she know Wesley from?

"Virginia?" Gunn asked weakly... I guess he had woken up at some point. "Virginia Bryce... are you in charge of the haven?"

"Yes," she said shortly. "I was told that Wesley would be expected with you, is he..." she put a mouth to her hand, shocked. "Did he... did something happen to him?"

I still hated this, but maybe it was better to say it out loud. "I'm sorry. He didn't make it out alive, Miss Bryce."

She gasped loudly, unable to form words for a moment.


	2. Chapter 2

Virginia aimed the glowing green gemstone on her bracelet so that its peculiar radiance swept Gunn from head to toe, turned the 'beam' off somehow, and stared into the facet for a moment. "His wounds are all stitched up," she recapped. "The blood transfusion from Miss Kates is going smoothly, a perfect match, and once that's done we can set him up on a glucose IV. I don't see any other problems requiring medical attention." She looked up and smiled at me, Illyria, Spike, and Groo. "Charles should be noticeably improved in an hour or two, though as his 'doctor' I'm formally excusing him from fighting any more battles to the death for at _least_ three days."

"He might not take to that well, Miss, considering we're in the middle of a war here," Spike put in. He had been partially patched up already himself... the bullet-like wounds bandaged and dressed with mint leaves and essence of icefruit, which have restorative effects on vampires. I'd been dressed up with some of the stuff myself.

"I'm sure that you can help me to persuade him," Virginia insisted. "He's done enough, and very nearly got himself killed."

"Well, we have a chance to rest and plan our next move, at least," I said. We had walked out into some kind of an informal conference room, conveniently enough. I turned to Groo first. "Grusehlagg, what the heck are you doing here? I thought you were going back to Pylea."

"I had thought of returning," Groo admitted, "but I had no place there, and knew not any way to go back. This land of yours seemed so vast and fascinating, that I began to explore it, seeking to help those in distress as I went."

"I met Groo in southern Idaho," Natasha put in. "Was trying to find a way to escort my 'potential' charge, Shannon, to Sunnydale California and Buffy Summers' protection. Harbingers and vampires were close on our trail, but..." she looked up at the tall warrior and smiled warmly at him. "He protected us all the way through to the very edge of town, and fought down thirty Bringers to give her a chance to make a break for it."

It suddenly occured to me that maybe Groo and Natasha were more than colleagues, or friends or whatever. "So, when Rupert Giles started up the council again, he put you on detatched duty? Why didn't he give you a slayer or three to train? I know that they're short on personnel right now."

"I didn't want one yet," she admitted. "I respect the hell out of Rupert Giles and wish him the best, but this new council he's building is turning against a lot of old tradition. I wanted to take a break for a few years and see what policy was by then. Also, by that time I'd found Aaron, and Groo and I kinda have our hands full with him."

I moved along. "And you're a direct link to the powers that be, except they communicate with words, instead of visions, right?" I asked Aaron.

"Yeah. Normally frustrating, cryptic words in rhyming couplets, but Nat can usually figure out what they're trying to tell me."

"And they told you that we were in trouble?" I asked. Nod. "How long ago?"

"Ohh... the first one came in sometime this morning," he said after a moment. "Took us all day to figure out who you were, where you were, and where you'd be by the time you needed our help."

"What, the message was about him, specifically?" Spike put in on cue, jerking a thumb in my direction. "Figures. Once again, Brood Boy catches a huge break from the Powers."

I was about to shout at him to cut it out, when, shockingly, Illyria cut in and saved me the trouble. "Enough!" the demon declared, staring at Spike with so much intensity that I could feel all the millions of her years in the weight of her regard; Spike actually squirmed underneath that powerful gaze. "They saved us **all**. _that_ is what is important." And then she turned away from him.

"For now," Natasha commented. "Wolfram and Hart's Senior Partners aren't about to give up looking for you this easily, and they're probably still massing their horde of demons here in L.A. By the way, I've made a call to help for the council, but I haven't gotten back any answer. Not quite sure whether to expect one - word is that there are quite a few people who were upset about your deal with Wolfram and Hart, mister Angel."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," I said, remembering Andrew Wells' closing words at the end of the incident with the wild Slayer, Dana. Buffy had ordered Andrew to make sure that Dana didn't stay in my custody, and had dispatched a full dozen slayers to him as backup. Even considering our little unspoken pact about staying out of each other's affairs except in cases of dire need, that had been a clear signal that she didn't trust me any more.

"And we didn't realize at the time I made the call that things were anywhere near this serious," Natasha added. "I could try again... do you have a live phone in here Miss Bryce?"

"No," Virginia said. "No way to keep them from opening a hole in the scrying blanket. We can try putting you out through a portal, though I'd rather not do too much of that considering everyone who's after you."

"For now, I'd suggest dropping it," I suggested. "If the slayers want to come and help, they'll come. If not... we'll find some way of dealing with this ourselves."

"I hope so," Virginia muttered doubtfully.

I smiled my most confident smile and turned back to her. "Do you have any good information on the situation outside?"

"Not me personally, but just a second." She hit a small intercom button, and talked softly to someone... I couldn't make out the words. In just a few seconds someone new came in to meet with us... a Vegrar demon, chalky-gray skinned and square eared. "This is Mattasee, my star pupil."

"You run a magic school here, miss?" Spike exclaimed in surprise.

"Yes," Virginia agreed. "Pure white wizardry only, for no personal objectives. The sanctuary is really only an offshoot."

"Mattasee?" I asked the young demon... at least he didn't look very old by human standards. "What can you tell us about the state of wolfram and hart's campaign against us."

"Well, I can't accurately guess what types of creatures they've sent through the dimensional gateway," he was in a somewhat high and squeaky voice, "but there was a big rush of activity around 2:15 to 2:20 am, which then eased off, and regular activity from then for another twenty-five minutes. Since then, there's been no activity at all, but they are maintaining the aperture at maximum dilation, which would seem to indicate they anticipate the need for future transfers."

"2:45 am was about when they stopped?" Illyria confirmed. I wondered exactly when she had become so familiar with our time system... possibly after the time jumping stuff. "That was a few minutes after the explosives were detonated... significantly before we passed through the doorway to this habitat."

"Ever since you came in, we've been getting reports of a change of tactics from the horde," Mattasee continued. "No longer content with scouring the streets for you, they're storming through buildings, sewer systems... anywhere that might conceivably provide cover... for a hiding place like this one. They're starting around the spot where you took the doorway in and expanding erratically, so it's impossible to guess when they might reach here... but I wouldn't imagine we have much longer than 24 hours."

"Wait a second," I said, suddenly realizing a question I should have asked earlier. "This giant dimensional gateway that they used to bring the horde across... where is it?"

"Umm..." He stretched his hands apart, revealing an odd pattern of lights hanging in the air between, and peered at the lights intently. "Looks like... Hyperion hotel."

"What?"

"Old place, lay abandoned for years, until some nutcase vigilante started using it as a base a few years back," Mattasee continued blithely, obviously not realizing what kind of nutcase he was talking to. "Ground level, fairly central... I'd say the lobby floor."

"They were coming through right next door," I muttered, realizing it. "That was how they got there so quickly, and kept bringing in new kinds of troops." Something was starting to fall into place, but not completely. "I need to talk to Gunn about this, once he wakes up. Virginia, Mattasee... uh, Illyria too, I'd like you all there."

"I don't get to sit in?" Spike complained.

"You were there when we were at the Hyperion, Spike," I pointed out, and noticed that Mattasee was starting to clue in. "I don't expect you to have much to contribute, but you can watch if you like."

Someone called Virginia away at that point, and Mattasee went with her. "What's the deal with this Bryce lady?" Spike asked me in a low voice. "You know her, Charles knows her."

"This shell... I do not retain any memories of her from Fred," Illyria put in.

"It was before Fred met us," I told her. "She... well, the way it started was pretty complicated, actually. She was a wizard's daughter, and her father wanted to hire me on as her bodyguard. I was out of town on personal business, and the envoy the father had sent wouldn't take no for an answer, so Wesley pretended to me and took on the job in my place." I smiled slightly at the thought.

"No need to go into all the details, but she had a falling out with her father and ended up dating Wesley for several months before breaking it off. I had no idea that she was involved in this magic school/sanctuary stuff."

Spike nodded, and Illyria stepped away from us, towards Virginia, who had come back into the room. "Are you acquainted with a warlock named Cyvus Vail?"

Virginia's face took on a look of surprise first, and then disgust. "Unfortunately, yes. Pretty much the bottom ot the barrel, but he's quite influential. The people my father refused to do business with sometimes did business with him."

"Wesley's mission, tonight, was to eliminate Vail," Illyria said. "Unfortunately, he did not succeed in this task... we all underestimated the resources that the warlock had at his disposal. It was Vail who killed Wesley." A pause. "However, through Wesley's sacrifice, I was able to complete his mission. Vail is destroyed... I felt that you should have this information."

"Um, uh, th-thanks," Virginia stuttered. "I... I need to go, go do something else." She hurried back out again.

#

"The... the Hyperion lobby?" Gunn said. He did look a little stronger now, though the IV drip going into his arm made me feel weird. "I... didn't we do some bad-ass magic ritual there? I - I can't remember exactly what for..."

"I was worried about that," I told him. "You're under an enchantment, an enchantment that I negotiated as part of the deal with Wolfram and Hart. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but..."

"I am no longer completely under this enchantment," Illyria announced. "Well, I never was, truly, but I have recovered the memories of Winnifred Burkle that were affected by the dweomer."

"Really?" I thought a moment. "Of course - you were there when the Orlon window was broken. I guess I should have asked you about this outside, but I keep... forgetting that you have access to Fred's memories."

She nodded. "First, you cast a spell in the hotel lobby to travel to inter-dimensional space and consult with the Mesek-tet totum of Wolfram and Hart, while you were trying to rescue Connor from the quor'toth."

"Connor?" Gunn repeated. "That kid who Cyvus Vail was after to kill a demon for him?"

"You weren't even there then," I reminded him. "You were in the holding cell dimension when Cyvus went after Connor!"

"Hey, I caught up on office gossip after I got back," Gunn shot back.

"Later, a rift emerged there in the hotel lobby, through which Connor emerged, aged to sixteen earth years within the space of a few weeks, relative to this world's time flow," Illyria continued. "Cordelia Chase, serving as the host for the essence of the rogue Power that became known as Jasmine, was first seen in that lobby after Chase was taken to a higher plane of existence. And..." she frowned here. "When you returned from the dimension of the spider demons, bearing Jasmine's true name, did the portal you arrived in by any chance open in the Hyperion lobby?"

I nodded ruefully. "Yep."

"Then it seems clear that your own activities have built the Hyperion lobby into a dimensional hotspot location," she concluded. "Dark interdimensional rituals and incoming portals tend to have that effect - they charge the psychic 'batteries' available at a given location."

"Wait a second," Gunn broke in. "That contract you signed with Wolfram and Hart... did you read the fine print?"

"Ummm..." I hesitated. "I tried to, but there was really a lot of it..."

"Do you remember if there was anything about the hotel in it?"

Somehow that rang a bell. "I'm not sure... I kinda think so - but I have no idea what it was, I'm sorry."

"That's okay," he assured me. "But you might have signed some kind of rights over the hyperion hotspot over to them."

"This is all very interesting," Spike broke in. "But what does it mean for right now?"

I looked around at the others. "Not sure," Gunn admitted.

#

"I don't see that there's anything else useful to discuss in here at the moment," I said a little bit later, in the conference room. "We need to head out again, try to tackle the horde - at least to distract them or divert them. Only those strong enough to protect themselves well... so, that'd be me, Illyria, Spike, Groo..." I looked at Natasha, not wanting to discount her out of hand. "I'll take your word on whether you qualify."

"What about me?" Aaron piped up.

"I'll take Natasha and Groo's word, when it comes to you," I told him with a slight chuckle.

"You'd better stay in here, Aaron," Natasha told him with a slight sigh. "Wait for another message. And I'll be here with you."

"All right," Virginia said. "Any idea where you'd like to come out?"

"Somewhere in the city just beyond the army's point of progress," I said, "but in a different way than towards the haven. They're going to assume that we're trying to slow them down and will probably divert creature-power in whatever bearing we appear from."

"All right," Virginia said, and started checking the map.

"Remember, Angel," Natasha put in. "There's only an hour or two left to sunrise. Most of the creatures in that army will be able to operate all right during daylight, but _you_ can't."

"I know the drill," I said in a low voice.

"Okay, I've got an exit spot for you," Virginia said, hurrying back. "Under the circumstances, I can't allow you to use the same doorway to go out and come back in - too much chance the enemy would discover it and figure out the right word to use to get in here."

"Why... why are you doing this, Virginia?" I said after a few moments. "Giving us haven is putting your entire operation here at risk - you had to know that."

She shrugged a little. "Because it's worth doing."

The four of us armed ourselves up, (except for Illyria, who still didn't believe in using foreign objects,) and Groo and I accepted some magical items that could be very useful, even if none of the artifacts that Virginia and Mattasee could spare were particularly powerful. (Spike was still on his 'no amulets' kick, which maybe isn't too surprising considering how the last one worked out.) Virginia gave us instructions for finding, activating, and using a few magic doorways that could return us to the haven - she'd shut down pretty much the entire system after we'd come through, knowing the chances were good that Wolfram and Hart's goons could have spotted a portal and reported it to a warlock, who could set about trying to divine the key term that would activate it.

"Oh by the way," Mattasee mentioned just as we were about to cross over. "There's activity on the gateway again. Just thought I should let you know about that." It wasn't good news, but I didn't really see how it changed our plan. Tried not to let Spike see I was getting nervous.

We emerged into a deserted apartment building courtyard, and followed the sounds of rampage and destruction. Didn't take too long to find about three dozen trolls, along with a couple of Xakanar demons and two of the shadow warriors. The trolls and demons were bashing holes into a couple of houses and other buildings, and also just digging down beneath the street at a point that seemed to be completely random. Down the block I could see that there were houses that had been reduced to rubble, and wondered if there had been people - families, still inside them at the time.

We attacked, instantly, and seemed to be doing pretty well. I was fencing with one of the shadow warriors, doing pretty well, and Illyria managed to take out the other one with a good sucker punch. Spike began to tangle with the Xakanar, while Groo did mop-up duty with the trolls and Illyria joined him as soon as she was done. Even when another Wolfram and Hart group joined in, including some ogres and a baboon demon, we seemed to be holding our own, and I was sure that we wouldn't need to worry about escaping and running away until a _lot_ more reinforcements showed up.

Suddenly... the bad guys turned and ran off in the direction opposite from the one we had come from. "Do we chase them?" Spike called out.

"We've got momentum, why ruin it?" I called out, feeling the rush of battle still surging in my veins.

"Umm... excuse me, sweetie?" a new voice called out. I spun around her and recognized her instantly. "I called off the troops - thought it would be easier to have a nice quiet chat if you weren't fighting for your life."

"We were all getting by pretty well," I felt obliged to insist. "Lilah Morgan. What are you doing here?"

"Out on assignment again," the dead Wolfram and Hart lawyer reported glibly. "I'm in charge of this mission." She waved around, clearly indicating all of the evil creatures going about their business not far away.

"Looks like you haven't done too well on your assignment so far," Spike put in.

"I haven't killed any of you yet, I admit," she conceded, "but I have patience. You haven't inflicted many casualties on my troops - I hope you understand that. And we're quite prepared to search the entire city... levelling most of it along the way if we have to... to find the secret hideout where you disappeared to, and where you're keeping Charles. Soon enough, you'll have nowhere left to run to, and the final battle can begin again." She shrugged. "Of course, there is another option that I've come up with."

"What, we just hand ourselves over to spare the city?" I scoffed.

"No, I didn't think you'd go for that one," she said offhandedly. "But... well, first off, this is a revenge mission, and there's precious little profit in revence. Especially with the kind of overhead we're taking on. All that the Senior Partners _really_ require at this point is a face-saver, Something that they can show to their friends and say 'yeah, we spared the fools' lives, but in exchange we got _this_.' I've spent all night researching what you have to offer, and would be _able_ to offer without violating your ethics, that would satisfy them."

Was getting a bad feeling here... I didn't know anything that I could give up that would be important enough to be worth all of our lives, and I wasn't sure I wanted to give it to Lilah if I had something like that... but I had to admit I didn't see that we had the forces available to stop her plan either. "What is it?"

"The Tooth of Light."

Lilah couldn't have surprised me more if she had said she wanted to catch the Easter Bunny. "That... that doesn't exist! It was just a plot point in a fantasy sequence... how do you even _know_ about it, anyway?"

Lilah smiled her big wide smile. "Oh, **that** is the interesting part! The Tooth is definitely real - it has nothing to do with the Beast, and couldn't have been used very well against him. But it's a real weapon, and you can show us the way to it, using your fantasy sequence as a guide. Somehow, Wo Pang's ritual dialed you into the true hiding place of the Tooth, and the defences that guard it. Why and how, we don't know."

"So, Angel fetches this weapon, and hands it over to you..."

"Probably to one of the knights of the order of Soron, or someone else I specify," Lilah corrected.

"...and then what happens?" Spike prompted.

"We let you live, we pull out of Los Angeles for the time being," Lilah told him. "My mission will be over. The Senior Partners will probably be starting to insert new agents back into the region, but that's out of my hands. I think I can promise that they won't target you again until the next time you interfere with your plans."

"You cannot offer her what she wants, Angel," Illyria opined. "The only reason she would make such an offer is if the weapon she speaks of is more valuable to the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart than our deaths."

"Correction," Lilah said. "The tooth is more valuable than your deaths, minus the expense of actually getting you killed. But if you don't want to negotiate, that's fine. I'll come find you before I take the offer off the tabl... what the hell?"

I turned around cautiously, and saw a wimpy little guy in a suit walking up to us. "Miss Morgan, there's a new development," he said without introduction. "New players have shown up at the ruins of the branch office. Could be bad news for us if..."

"You idiot!" she screamed at him. "Couldn't you tell I was negotiating with the enemy?" She pointed at milquetoast boy, and he disappeared in a cloud of shimmering air. And then, like a blink, Lilah was gone too.

"We need to get back to the office," Spike pointed out. "As quickly as possible."

"We can't afford to go through the haven and back out," I decided.

"Was there anything that Virginia and her boy gave you that allows for quick travel?" Spike asked. "The law offices, or what's left of them, are on the other side of the horde's territory."

I checked through my pocket. "Nope, no luck." I wasn't even sure if Illyria had taken anything, but she didn't examine any items physically. (Probably if she had, she'd remember exactly what she had and so wouldn't need to consult them again.)

"Oh, I have something!" Groo said. Taking out a small figurine, he held it up in front of his face. "I summ-"

"Wait a sec..." I started, but too late, of course.

"-mon you!" Groo finished. With a soft _bammph_ and a pop of light, a gigantic white bird was sitting there on the ground, between us. The figurine blew away as dust in the wind.

"A bird?" Illyria asked caustically.

"Why not?" I asked. "As long as it'll get us there, and quickly, I'd ride a giant wasp." I turned to Groo. "Do you know how to instruct it?"

"I think, since I am the one who commanded it forth, that all I need to is instruct it mentally," he replied.

"Well come on, everybody up!" Spike said a little dubiously. The avian apparition was large enough to have quite a bit of back to go around, and Groo ended up near the neck, (which seemed good, giving him plenty of visibility and proximity to the bird's head.) I sat behind him, with Spike and Illyria to each side of me, just behind the wings.

With a loud cry, the bird took off then, and headed south by southeast, in the direction I had pointed out for Groo. It didn't take long before we were six stories above the ground and travelling at what must have been a hundred and fifty miles an hour. "Not bad," I had to say, though I'm not sure any of the others could hear me over the wind.

"We've got trouble," Spike announced loudly, pointing ahead and to the right. It was still pretty dark, and the lights of the city didn't shine very bright up this high, but I could make out a shape in that direction. A sinuous shape, with large flapping wings.

"The dragon," I guessed. "Do you think it's spotted us yet?"

"It has," Illyria confirmed. How she could tell I didn't know, but I was starting to trust in her certainty.

"Try bearing to the left, Groo," I suggested, and the bird banked and turned. Things didn't look good though.

"It's not as fast as we are," Spike said, "but it can intercept us if we try to get to the offices."

"What about if we fly in a wide eastward arc," I suggested, waving to the left of us, "and lead it astray, then outrun it back?"

"Three problems with that," Spike decided. "One, it'll take too long. Two, the beastie might be too smart to take the bait. And three, we don't know how fast this birdy of ours can fly at top speed. The dragon might have greater endurance for a sustained chase, in which case we'd be in big trouble."

"Did anyone take distance-striking magic that would be effective against a fiend of that sort?" Groo suggested. (I guess they may have never had dragons in Pylea.)

"Oh hey, this might work," I said, coming up with a short brown stick. "Adjust course, fly in closer towards it Groo." The bird banked back to the right again, and I tried to judge well. Had to be within effective range, but not so close that the wyrm would breathe fire at us...

Now. With a quick jerk of my wrist, I activated the magic stick. A disturbance flew through the air, and frost began precipitating around the line in which the stick was aiming. The effect drove into the side of the dragon's chest, and it screamed, its wings frozen for an instant. It fell twenty feet before recovering, and we passed right above it as it flew around in a tight circle, puffing smoke furiously and making for a building that it could land on and rest up.

"Wand of cold?" Spike said, impressed.

"Something like that."

By the time we got to the ruins of the Wolfram and Hart offices, it wasn't hard to guess where the action was. Lilah had committed a lot of her best forces here, it seemed... the shadow warriors, blind assassins and what looked like highly trained ninja vampires. Groo had the bird land on a nearby outcropping of wreckage and we all jumped down, which apparently was a signal to the bird that its job was done and it disappeared in a puff of white smoke.

There were five people at the center of the fray, four girls and a man, protecting a sixth, a fallen comrade, and taking a beating themselves. Could it be? I pulled out the truesilver sword (which I was really starting to like,) slashed an assassin across the face, elbowed a ninja in the solar plexus, and then got a look at the girl who staked him through the heart while he was trying to get his bearings.

It was... her.

I couldn't believe that I was staring into Buffy Summers' face again. She seemed to be equally stunned to have encountered me like this. She looked good - a little more mature than when I'd last seen her. She'd done something to her hair, though I couldn't quite put my finger on what.

And then I realized that a shadow warrior was about to stab her from behind, and there was no time for anything but to grab her by both arms and fall backwards. The dark soldier in question staggered a little, finding no resistance where he had expected there to be a warm, solid, breathing body to push his rapier through, and as I hit the ground I fumbled for a throwing knife and tossed it towards the apparition's arm. Rapier went flying. Good enough for now.

Buffy turned over, saw how close the guy had been to her, and smiled sheepishly. "Heard you guys had gotten into a kind of trouble you couldn't deal with," she said, with a bit of an ironic tone in her voice. "Not sure I believe it at the moment."

I laughed a little myself, seeing the mirror image of my trip to Sunnydale last year developing. Natasha's message had gotten through, about my apocalypse, and she was offering to help if I wanted it.

"Better keep an open mind," I quipped. "Things are seriously dire, and you couldn't have shown up at a better mo- ment." Halfway through the last word, a tentacled, blue-hided demon lunged with two different heads at each of us, (out of at least six heads total,) and we both leapt up to continue the good fight. I took a firmer grip on my cutlass, Buffy caught an axe that someone tossed her (couldn't make out who,) and we each had to work quickly to keep arms or chunks of upper chest from getting bitten off.

"So... did you get the message from Natasha Devon?" I asked.

"Umm - yeah, actually, " _hack_, "but only en route." She still pronounced it 'ehnn rowwt'. "Willow saw a sign in the nether realm, said that you guys would need our help. We..."

All of a sudden, the demon did an about face and scampered away, its heads trailing behind almost comically. I turned around and looked, and all about us the other nasties were doing the same. "That's a bad sign," I muttered to Buffy.

"Spike!" she called out. Another bad sign. She hurried over to him. "I'm glad you're okay."

Spike smiled tightly. "Might want to have a look at Red," he murmured, gesturing Buffy over. I came along too.

Willow Rosenberg - Red - had been the fallen comrade I'd noticed right at the beginning. Looked like head trauma, possibly internal injuries - she wasn't in the best of shape. (Being totally unconscious rarely helps.)

I looked up from her to see who was here and deduct the ones that I had come with to see who was in Buffy's party. Faith, that was good, she was someone who I felt I could count on in apocalypse. Rupert Giles... we'd had our issues, but I felt pleased that he'd come... probably was wanting to make sure that Wesley was all right, since they'd been colleagues. I'd have to tell him, and Faith and Willow, that Wes was dead.

Two more girls - one of them, I realized with surprise, was Dana, the crazy girl that had given us a bit of a runaround here in LA, a few months ago. Training with Buffy or whoever seemed to be doing her good. The last one, maybe nineteen with dark long dark hair and subtly exotic features, was leaning over Willow's body worriedly. I didn't know her, but she, too, moved with the grace and strength of a Slayer, even when not in combat. All told, that made a small and deadly team of six - four Slayers, (two veteran and two newbies,) an experienced and competent Watcher, and one very smart and powerful witch.

There was a sound like a clap of thunder, and I looked up... we were surrounded by some kind of bubble - twenty feet away in all directions, and ten feet overhead, was a swirling mass of black, white, and every color in the rainbow. "What the blimy..." Spike muttered, and stepped towards it.

"No!" Illyria declared, striding forward imperiously, shoving Spike back, and moving carefully towards the barrier herself. She stopped well back and _sniffed_ at it. "Chaos space," she announced, returning to the rest of us. "And it is beginning to contract around this place. None of us can pass through it and survive - not even me. Our only escape would be magic."

I nodded. "Disrupt it somehow? Break down the wall?"

"Too risky." She shook her head. "Flying bubbles of chaos could strike anyone in the area. I would recommend transport magic - teleportation or passing through an enchanted doorway. Anything that can convey us outside without physically passing through the chaos bubble."

"That would be Willow's specialty," Faith said. "But she isn't in shape to be doing any hocus pocus at the moment."

"Did we bring any teleport spells?" I asked Groo, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer. If any of us had, we'd probably have used them to get here, instead of taking flying time on the big bird. I started going through my pockets anyway.

"What are you doing?" the fourth slayer called out, and I turned to see what she was talking about. Illyria had knelt over Willow's body, pushing her friend away, and I could see a bright shining blue light that lasted for several seconds. It faded out, and Willow's head shook and her eyes opened.

"What is it... Fred?" I looked at Illyria, wondering how she'd react to that.

"Emm... no." She shook her head sadly. "Fred Burkle - is gone. I am Illyria."

"You... you infected her body!" Willow exclaimed.

Illyria nodded slowly. "I wasn't aware of it at the time."

Giles had hurried over to Willow by this point. "We are trapped in a bubble of chaos space and it is closing about us... we need an safe exit. Do you feel up to magic?"

Willow climbed to a sitting position. "I feel... great!" She looked around and spotted me. "Angel - where's your base of ops?"

"Ummm..." Nothing like being put on the spot. "There's a safe haven, but I'm actually not sure exactly where it is."

"Safer that way?" Faith wisecracked.

"What's your route in?" Giles asked. The swirling color around us did seem to be getting closer.

"Umm... there are a few deactivated magic doors around the city - I was given a string of glyphs to connect them up."

Willow's face lit up. "Read the symbols off to me." I repeated the formulae that Virginia had given me, (at the same time as she had told me how to represent them in graphic form.) When I was done she immediately started gesturing and mumbling under her breath.

"How did you help her?" I asked Illyria quietly. "Do you have your full powers back, or..."

Without a word, she presented me with a crystal - or what was left of one. Dull cloudy blue, slightly cracked. I peered at it, not quite sure what the point was. "The Bryce woman persuaded me to take one of her most powerful healing charms... just in case."

"Alright, chop chop!" Willow was calling out. I realized that there was a glowing white spot on the floor before her, and her Slayer friend and Buffy jumped down inside. One by one, as the chaos outside closed in, we all followed.

"Umm... okay, I didn't expect _that_." It was Virginia speaking, looking at the white circle of light floating about seven feet high in the reception foyer of her safe haven. "Angel... what's going... who are these..." She focused on Willow, who was the last to drop down through the hole, and it closed behind her. Apparently Virginia could see the power inside her at first glance. "You have done this?"

"Umm... yeah. Hope you don't mind us dropping in," Willow giggled nervously.

Virginia frowned slightly. "What's your coven?"

"Emm, no coven, exactly. Watcher."

"And a lone witch?" Mattasee asked. Willow nodded.

"Ummm... hi!" Buffy went over to Virginia. "Sorry about the intrusion. I'm Buffy Summers. Prime Slayer." She didn't say 'and you?' out loud, but somehow the look on her face and her body language conveyed it completely.

"Umm... my name is Virginia Bryce, I run a safe haven and wizardry school here. Nice to meet you, Miss Summers."

"Thanks." She shot a glance over at me, and then to Spike.

"Conference room free?" I asked Virginia.

"Except for your Miss Devon and young Andrew. Might get a little crowded with your rapidly growing retinue."

"Hey, we're not too proud to sit on the floor, are we?" Faith asked her friends.

But a card table and some folding chairs were brought in, and there were seats or perches for all. "So... what's the situation?" Buffy asked Spike and I once we were all settled.

"Well, we took out the key people of Wolfram and Hart's extended network here in the Los Angeles area, the Circle of the Black Thorn..." I started.

"...And now, they're moving earth, hell, and quite a few buildings to kill us for it," Spike finished. "You ran into some of the footsoldiers back there, not to mention that little 'chaos bubble' trap that was probably set for us."

"Okay," Buffy nodded, quickly coming to terms with the tactical realities. "So it's just a fight for survival now?"

"What about Gunn, and Wesley?" Faith broke in, clearly having done the math, and overheard (or known already) about Illyria and Fred.

I took a deep breath - this wouldn't be easy. "Wesley is dead. Gunn was badly wounded, but thanks to Virginia Bryce's help he's going to live... assuming that we can find a way to stop he Horde before they find this safe haven and kill everyone in it."

Buffy nodded... she had never really gotten along well with Wes, (having only known him in his 'pompus fool' phase before the reality of life outside the Ivory tower of watcher training had matured him and turned him into a man I was proud to call a friend...) and had never met Gunn - or Fred for that matter. "What's your plan?"

I looked over at Spike, and he made this grandly flamboyant wave to yield the question to me. "I... I'm not sure if we have one," I admitted. "We tried doing the attack and distract thing, but to be honest it didn't work very well, and I don't like the idea of going back to it."

"Yeah, we really don't have the numbers for that," Faith conceded.

"My instinct has always been to strike boldly for the heart," Buffy said. "How are they getting all of these guys here? I don't think there are that many hard-core demons on instant call to Wolfram and Hart in the whole state."

"Big-ass dimensional gateway," Spike jumped in with, beating me to the punch. "Lobby of the Hyperion hotel, wherever that is. One of Angel's old haunts, I think."

"Then our first objective is to close that door," Buffy said.

"I'd thought about that, but it seemed heavily risky," I admitted.

"Not to mention, there are still about a zillion demons that have already come through to deal with," Faith pointed out.

"If I had my full powers back, I know what I would do," Illyria announced suddenly. "I would 'omab' the gateway - deal with them all at once."

That threw me for a loop for a second... pretty much everyone else too. "Omab?" I asked after a bit.

"I think it's an ancient demonic word that has no equivalent in human languages," Giles put in. "To..." he struggled to find the meaning, looking at Illyria. "More than close, to _negate_ the existence of the gate."

"Not exactly," Illyria frowned too, evidently having similar difficulties expressing the thought in our language. "Consequences are not undone, but if the gate were omabbed, it would become convoluted in its own claudication in such a way that for anything that has passed through the gate... the reality of such a thing would be subverted. It would not exist in this world; it would not be returned to the world from which it came. For any but one in a million such bodies, it would never again exist on any known world."

"So... you wrap up the gateway with a pretty pink bow on it," Spike summarized, "and all the demons and dragons and dark warriors and such... just disappear? One out of every million of them get thrown to some other dimension, and the rest... either marooned in the void between the dimensions, or totally annihilated, nobody knows which?" After a few seconds, Illyria nodded slowly. "Sounds bloody good to me!"

"But Illyria doesn't have her full powers back." That was Gunn's voice, and I turned around to see him leaning against the wall just inside the doorway. "That seems like a pretty big problem with the plan."

"How long have you been there?" I asked. "You should be resting."

"Hey, Miss Bryce said I can't fight no more," Gunn protested. "She didn't say nothin' about no war councils. Let a brother have a **little** fun!" He didn't protest too much when I led him over and sat him down in my own seat.

"Okay, um... I have a question," Willow said after a moment. "How did Illyria lose her full powers? Did she have them when she... was brought forth from the Deeper Well?"

"How did you know about that?" Gunn interrupted.

"I've known of the great demons of the Deeper Well, including Illyria for years," Willow explained simply. "I'm sorry that I wasn't able to help Fred when you tried to call for me... I wasn't exactly able to get to the phone at the time..."

"So we heard," Spike muttered, staring pointedly at Giles, who had been the one giving me the brush-off at the time.

"I would have helped if I could - you know that Fred meant the world to me," Willow continued. "But it was too late once I got word..."

"It was probably too late when we called you," I assured her, "and as hard as it was to accept at the time, I'm starting to believe that Illyria's arrival was meant to be. For **our** side."

Willow nodded slowly and turned to Illyria. "When I saw you back at the ruins, I was just surprised - I guess I hadn't realized that you would look so much like she does. Er, 'like she did,' I guess. So, to get back to the subject... your powers? When you returned to this earth?"

I looked over at Illyria, but she didn't seem in any hurry to answer the question. "We think she had most of them. But her full powers were destablizing... creating rifts in the timeline and threatening to go thermonuclear. Wesley designed a device to draw them away from her, to save her life and others."

"And what happened to the energy after it was drawn away?" Faith prompted.

"The device was never designed to store my energies," Illyria said. "They were bled off, into a hundred different worlds."

"Okay, so much for that idea," Faith said with a sigh.

"If your powers were that unstable," Buffy put in, "is it safe to charge you back up again?"

"Yes," Illyria declared firmly. "I would not need a power level as high as I was brought forth with, and would only need to contain it for a short while before concluding the mission. It is feasible... if we can isolate a sufficiently powerful locus of mystic energy." She chuckled hollowly. "A 'really good' power-up."

I was starting to get a feeling about this mission of Illyria's, but I'd wait for an opportunity to ask her about it alone. "Well, I made sure to juice up before I left, but..." Willow started, then broke off, staring intently at Illyria, waving a hand slightly. "I'm not sure we're... compatible."

"I would tend to agree with that conclusion," Illyria said softly.

"And I'm not sure if I could even provide the kind of energy you're talking about... any idea if you could explain the requirements?"

The ancient demon didn't reply to that for a long moment, cocking her head at odd intervals. "The operation would require a power source capable of generating a field strength of at least three hundred million Tarchons on the ancient Assyrian measurement system, somewhere in the frequency range of 'xhi' to 'gav', for a sustain period of at least eighteen seconds - a total energy of one point four times ten to the ninth dars..." She broke off, looking at Willow, who was staring back at her. "Are you familiar with this formal schema?"

"Umm..." Willow shook herself. "Yes, quite familiar. I confess I'm a little surprised that you're so familiar with the Assyrian nomenclature... that civilization developed thousands of years after you were consigned to the Deeper Well, didn't it?"

"I have familiarized myself with more recent developments," Illyria replied a little stiffly. "The Assyrian emphasis on quantification and categorization of mystic forces is quite intriguing... for mortal majik, that is." Willow smiled faintly at that.

"Well no, I wouldn't be able to fufill those requirements... not with that specific type of magical burst, or such an intensity in a relatively short period of time. You know us mortal majicians... we're built a little better for the long haul than short sprints."

"Disappointing, on this occasion," Illyria remarked neutrally.

"Well, what about some other source of power?" Buffy suggested.

"A plasma drake could do it," Natasha put in. "But they're disagreeable creatures, and more than a match for everyone in this room, no offense. Plus, even if we could subdue one, I'm not sure how you get one to give off a burst of mystic energy on cue, to such precise specifications. So... not feasible."

"Also, nearly extinct in all known planes of existence," piped up Mattasee, who was apparently kibitzing on the council.

"It is a little out of our way," Illyria brainstormed, "but the heart of the 'Boca del Infierna' might provide sufficient intensity to..."

"Your references are probably out of date," Giles interrupted. "The Hellmouth has shut itself down, since the ultimate battle of Sunnydale High and, er, well, Spike's seemingly last stand, one should say. I was down in the Sunnydale crater about three months ago, measuring mystic energies, and they were down to the same level as many minor loci in North America, even in the underground tunnels as close as I could get to the central co-ordinates. I'm sure they've only gone down further by now - I'd have picked up traces of a rebound even in England."

"Hmm. A pity," Illyria said softly. I saw Buffy gritting her teeth.

"Draining a Velerian talisman would do it I suppose," Willow muttered. "But they're only carried by Velerian sorcerers, and there aren't any of _them_ left on Earth..."

"D'you suppose there are any of these sorcerers kickin' about in the realms that Wolfram and Hart is getting their army from, though?" Spike asked her with a cheeky grin.

"You mean... we somehow try to get Wolfram and Hart to bring a Velerian sorcerer across, complete with talisman... steal the talisman from him, and use it to entangle the gateway and subvert everybody who has passed through it... including the sorcerer himself?" Buffy weighed that. "Could work. But how do we convince them to bring a sorcerer like that across, that specific order and whatever?"

"And then, how do we find him, and get the talisman away from him without giving him a chance to destroy or drain it completely?" Willow put in.

"Not to mention fighting our way through to the gateway at the very heart of Wolfram and Hart's forces and giving Illyria enough time to get the job done," I chimed in. "Anyone else have any problems with this plan?"

Surprisingly enough, Illyria volunteered again. "I am no longer certain that I have the skill or knowledge to manipulate a gateway claudication with sufficient precision. The mathematical expertise of Fred Burkle will be helpful, but I require a comparable fund of mystic experience to draw upon."

Willow shook her head quickly. "That isn't my specialty."

"Nor mine," Giles volunteered. "Beings of lore from a thousand different worlds, yes, I would venture to consider myself an expert. But the actual ways and means of contructing passageways between planes of reality..." He shook his head slowly.

"A pity," she repeated, cocking her head. "There is only one mortal I have known to posess the experience I require: Wesley Windham-Pryce."


	3. Chapter 3

About fifteen minutes later, the big war council had broken up, though nothing more had been decided. A lot of the people involved needed to eat and take care of other mortal necessities, and Virginia had poked her head in to mention that the morning twilight had started to break, making it more hazardous for Spike or myself to venture outside. Soon, unless the day turned especially stormy or there was an unscheduled solar eclipse, it would be impossible for the length of the day.

"Are you sure that Wesley's the only person who could have the information you need?" I asked Illyria. She had never needed to eat, and I was alright without drinking more blood for a while, though I could probably do with a pick-me-up considering how much effort I had expended over the past several hours. I hadn't quite gotten up the nerve to ask Virginia if she had any pig's blood or the like handy, though, and was kind of counting on Spike paving the way for me. (Though it occured to me at that very moment that if there was only a little available, he would probably take it all without any consideration of my needs.)

"Undoubtedly there would be many who would possess it, probably even some in the Los Angeles area," Illyria told me. "Even possibly an individual who would be inclined to help us, though such knowledge seems to be more frequently gained by those with sinister motives in your modern world. The problem would be how to find such a person, with limited time."

"There's another option," Willow said, stepping up to the two of us, a breakfast burrito in one hand and a cafe latte in the other. "Magic might help. Not a full resurrection spell - I don't have the supplies for something like that - not to mention the side-effects and trying to recover Wesley's body... but I know a ritual for summoning back souls that have passed beyond death, as ghosts. It's... a spell of significant power - not to be cast for personal reasons only, but I think this situation would justtify it."

"Hmmm." I considered that. "What are the risks?"

"Nothing too bad," she hastened to assure me. "The clearest disclaimer is that souls you didn't intend may cross over at the same time. There isn't actually a provision in the ritual text to call on a certain person by name, but usually if you have a certain someone in mind, and their spirit is willing to answer, you'll get them." She turned to Illyria. "When Wesley arrives as a ghost, he should be able to merge with you briefly, and then you'll be able to use his experience as if it were your own, to complete the operation on the dimensional gate."

I thought about it. "Okay... let's wait until we've gotten the talisman, and then you can do it."

"I think it'd be better to cast the ritual now," Willow argued. "I've got plenty of power now, I'm not getting any stronger, while later on when things are happening fast I might be hurting for juice. Given the mystical energy that's flooding all of Los Angeles while that gate remains open, Wesley's ghost will probably be able to stick around indefinitely, until our mission is complete."

As I looked into Willow's eyes I realized that there was probably something else that she wasn't saying. Getting the Velerian talisman could be quite dangerous, and there was certainly a chance that someone, even Willow herself maybe, could die. She wanted to make sure that this was done beforehand, so that her passing wouldn't hurt the chances of us being able to pull off this plan more than it had to. While I hoped it wouldn't come to that - her mystic arts would be extremely helpful in the push back to the Hyperion hotel, and of course she was a god friend - I couldn't fault her logic. "Okay - what do we need?"

"Nothing much," Willow said. "A small room - everyone we can round up who actually knew Wesley. The ritual itself is entirely verbal."

"Everyone who knew Wesley," Illyria said. "Beside the three of us, that would be Spike, Gunn, the Bryce woman..."

"Faith, Buffy," I continued. "And... Giles." Rupert Giles was crossing the room to approach us as I said that, I realized. "Rupert?"

Before letting Giles get a word in edgewise, Willow jumped in and quickly told him of the plan to summon up Wesley's ghost. (She always had been something of an excitable girl once she got on a roll... I remember the time she chewed both Giles and myself out for the ways we were mistreating Buffy without realizing it... quite an impressive rant actually.)

"Erm, yes, that does seem a reasonable solution to the problem," Giles finished once she was finally done, "but I'm afraid I will have to recuse myself from the proceedings." Illyria and I started to stare at him at that point. "I'm familiar with the ritual you mention, and... well, I'm aware how sensitive it is to the subconscious thoughts of the participants. I have lost far too many people over the past few years. Dealing with my own ghosts, literally, is a distraction that none of us can afford at this time," he said stiffly.

Lost far too many people. The name 'Jenny Calendar' rang through my mind. Giles' girlfriend - whom my evil alter-ego had taken away from him. I also knew that he had lost many friends in the Watchers when the forces of the First Evil attacked that institution, and only barely survived himself.

"I, uh - I came over to discuss the trap that we will have to lay for a Velerian sorcerer," Giles continued. "It occurred to me that if Wolfram and Hart believe that they have found your hiding place, Angel, but that it is protected by a metolytic protective dome, a Velerian sorcerer may be the easiest way of breaking through that defensive field - even if they have to go to considerable lengths to find such a sorcerer."

"We can go and set up a trap somewhere, and I can create the protective dome!" Willow filled in. "Although I'll need to let it drop before the sorcerer actually has a chance to start hammering away at it... would be bad for me and bad for the talisman. Good idea, Giles. We'll just do the ghost spell, and then get on that." Giles smiled, nodded, and backed away.

"Maybe we shouldn't ask Buffy to take part either," Willow decided. "She doesn't know Wesley that well, and wasn't on the best of terms with him - it could be a source of bad energy, which is never helpful. What about Virginia?"

"It was several years ago, but I think they were quite close," I said, weighing it in my mind. "I think we'd be better off with her than without."

"Okay, I'll try to round up everyone else and you can ask her," Willow said, bustling off. Illyria raised an eyebrow and stayed where she was, turning to explore the wall in exhaustive and minute detail.

When I found Virginia, she was talking with Spike and hailed me down. "There's a new development," she said quickly. "Apparently a remarkably thick smoke bomb of some sort was just detonated high over Los Angeles. Nobody seems to know much, but it looks as if the dust and cloud won't dissipate for perhaps two days, and almost no sunlight will get through."

"Wolfram and Hart," Spike said. "Protecting their own asses... making sure that these knights of Soron and ninja vampires and everyone else who can't handle the sunlight doesn't have to take cover. For two days, it's the next best thing to eternal night."

"I don't think it's all about their people," I said after a moment. "I know Lilah Morgan, and this just stinks of her kind of arrogance. For the most part, she's doing it for _our_ benefit. Yours and mine, Spike. She wants to make sure that we have full mobility, even while the sun is up."

"But why?" Virginia asked.

"Because it's no fun if I'm at a disadvantage," I said. "It's not about winning with her, so much as about beating me."

"Someone sounds full of themselves," Spike jibed.

I let it go for the time being. "We're doing a ritual to call forth Wesley's spirit. Willow wants both of you there, since you both knew him."

"Where?" Spike asked.

#

We ended up doing the ritual in a small room in the sanctuary that I hadn't seen before... a spare bedroom, or that was what it had been before Willow got at it. When I first saw it, Willow and Faith were carrying the bed out into the larger lounge that lay just outside. Most of the other furniture had already come out.

I watched as Willow went back in and evaluated it with a critical eye. Two pieces of furniture were still there, sitting against the far wall - a couch and a loveseat. Willow seemed to evaluate the empty space for a moment, and nodded in satisfaction. "That'll be good enough. Come on." All of the intended participants were nearby, and at Willow's direction we stepped into the room, the door was closed, and a wide circle was formed.

"Think only of Wesley, concentrate on him," Willow warned us softly before beginning. "I call upon Hades, the arbiter of the paths of the dead, to lend us his guidance in this time," she called out ringingly. and paused for a moment.

"We are in hiding, hunted by our enemies, and the spirit of he who is dear to us is far away. Unseen by us, he walks the paths of your kingdom. Extend your rod, oh Hades, and guide our friend to us in spirit and in sight!"

There was a soft poof. I looked into the centre of the circle, but Wesley's face (or any part of him,) was very definitely not there.

"Took you long enough to invite us over!" a familiar voice called. Following the sound, I turned about... and there, at the far end of the room, there were people sitting on the furniture. Ever so slightly transparent people, which I guess qualified them as ghosts, if the fact that they had all died didn't.

On the loveseat was Wesley, smiling that relaxed and contented grin that I saw so rarely. His legs were spread wide, allowing Fred to sit mostly in front of him, and his arms were encircling her waist from behind. On the couch, Cordelia Chase sat at one end, her hair dark brown and shoulder length like it was when I first met her in Los Angeles. In the middle of the couch, holding Cordy's hand, was none other than... Allen Francis Doyle!

All of my friends and team members from here in Los Angeles who had passed away... and now they outnumbered the ones who were still with me, come to think of it. It also occurred to me that they were acting very couple-y, which kinda made sense. Each of those pairs had had considerable romantic sparks, only to be interrupted prematurely by the untimely death of one partner. Now all of them were together in death... no reason, assuming that the cosmos allowed it, that they shouldn't be able to pick up where they left off.

"Wait a second," Gunn broke in, staring at one spirit in particular. "They said that you were..."

"Destroyed?" Fred asked in that soft Texas accent. "Consumed? You should know that that isn't possible, Charles. The soul is immortal - which is the same as sayin' that it's indestructible. Why were you takin' the word of a crazy doctor who admitted that he didn't know nothin' about the rise of Illyria anyway?" She smiled shyly.

"I... I guess we weren't thinking straight," I admitted, more than a little overwhelmed. Willow had warned that other souls might answer the call, but to see all of them at once was more than I could handle.

"Though, I kinda get why y'all had to believe that at the time," Fred continued. She was talking more Texan than usual, which generally meant she was feeling nervous. "You were hell-bent on resurrectin' me, and that wasn't the point. Illyria had his... its, her - part to play. I understand that now." And she giggled slightly, as if there were something that she knew that she couldn't tell any of us yet.

"So..." Illyria shook her head, stepping up to Wesley, and making a determined effort to avoid Fred for the moment. "Do you know why we have summoned you here?"

"Yes, and I'd be happy to help," he assured her. "But that can wait until later. Right now, you've got a talisman to steal."

"Okay, this all-knowing ghost thing is kinda starting to get on my nerves," I admitted. "Cordy, Doyle - it's so great to see you guys. You're doing okay I hope?"

"Couldn't be better, now," Doyle said, winking at Cordelia.

"Don't worry, none of us are going anywhere until your mission is done," Cordy assured me. "There'll be time for catching up. Come to think of it, I wanna go on this talisman mission. Could come in handy, having a few ghosts around." She concentrated on a cup that was sitting in a small alcove out of the way, and suddenly it zipped across the room, nearly smacking Gunn on the side of the face, and smashed into the opposite wall, shattering into a few dozen pieces.

"Hey!" Gunn complained.

"Sorry, new to this telekinesis stuff," she said. "Didn't mean for it to go quite that fast."

"Good to have you aboard," I said, looking up towards I-knew-not-what.

"Oh, Will, before I forget," Cordelia added. "I have a message for you."

"A... a message?" Willow repeated, seeming first incredibly confused, then cautiously hopeful.

"Yeah, from a... a Tara McRay? Something like that. Umm, she sends you all her love, emm, and she's sorry that she couldn't make it herself, but you-know-who have her incredibly busy off on the Astral plane."

"Tara?" Willow repeated, "I... I know who? Are you sure that it's really her and not some kind of psychic impostor?"

"Message came with an approved identity seal just as we were leaving to come here," Cordelia replied slowly. "As far as 'you-know-who', that's kind of afterlife code. The forces of good, the powers that be."

"Wow," Willow repeated, a small tear showing at the corner of her eye and the muscles in her jaw trembling slightly. "She's working for them directly, now? Like you guys are?"

"Looks like," Doyle said. "Never met her, to the best of my knowledge, but there are a lot of us."

"You should be proud," Fred chimed in.

"I... I am proud," Willow said in a soft whisper, brushing away the tear, and another one that was forming nearby. "Now let's go make her proud too."

#

There were delays in setting up our trap for a Velerian sorceror of course... Willow had to do some crash research and practice to be sure that she was up for creating a meto-whatzit dome and maintaining it long enough, (and holding it up against anything short of a sorceror that wolfram & hart might throw at it.) Giles and Virginia researched possible locations for our fake 'hideout' in the meantime.

I pulled Illyria aside for a quick chat as soon as I could - something had been nagging at me. I got to the point as quickly as possible: "This plan of yours... convoluting and subverting the gateway - are there any risks to you?"

She was silent for what seemed like a long moment, though it probably wasn't any longer than fifteen seconds. "In my old body, in the old days, there would have been none," she began resentfully.

"And now?" I pressed, my guess already pretty much confirmed.

"They are considerable... though I am unsure of the exact chances."

"Of what nature?" I asked, and then made an attempt to throw away the euphemism of risk analysis. "What might happen to you?"

She shrugged. "Very generally... serious injury, death. Total annihilation. I cannot be more specific - attempting to perform such an operation from a human shell is something that has never been done before." Illyria gazed into my face while I stayed silent.

"But these possibilities only run a slight chance of preventing me from completing this mission."

"Yeah, I get that," I told her. "It's a kamikaze scenario - you may die, but you'll take the Wolfram and Hart army with you." I took a deep breath. "You'll save us all."

"You'll save yourself," she shot right back. "If you can provide the energy that this endeavour will require, and escort me safely to the gateway. I would not be able accomplish those things and carry out the plan by myself."

"Small comfort," I put in.

Illyria ignored that, suddenly lost in her own thoughts. "It has been... strage, to encounter the spirits of Wesley and Winnifed Burkle," she said after a long moment.

"Yeah, I bet," I replied. One was the individual who had been closest to her since she had come forth from the Deeper Well, and the other was the girl whose body her essence had taken over as its vessel.

"That has triggerred questions about whether there will be a continuation after this phase of my existence is complete," She seemed somber... contemplative. "Is there an afterlife for such as myself? I have already slept millenia in the deeper well and wakened in a world not my own - it seems unlikely that a continued existence on some other plane would be more compatible."

"Or maybe I will become one with the rhythms of the cosmos." She cocked her head, considering. "I believe I would appreciate that."

"Then I hope you find it... when the time comes," I told her.

Illyria turned and stared at me as if she had forgotten I was there, and then smiled. "Frankly, I think I would just as soon meet my reckoning now as later, whatever the fate laid out for me should be. I do not understand this world, so full of trials and objectives that seem like only shadows to what I have left behind." She shook her head. "How better than to end it than with a triumph?"

"Hey, you'll get no argument from me," I laughed.

There was an awkward moment, and Illyria seemed to be actually straining for some excuse to leave. "I should... consult with the witch Willow Rosenberg. I have had some experience with metolytic protective fields that may be of assistance to her, though creating them myself is not an ability I have ever developed."

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." Illyria seemed to be about to say something else, then evidently changed her mind (its mind? So hard to know what pronouns to use in this situation,) without another word. I waited a moment and headed back myself, to get an update from Giles.

I didn't mean to overhear, or to lurk in the shadows. Moving stealthily is just kind of a habit by this point, but I happened to see Buffy going up to Spike without either of them noticing me. It would be hard to say which of the two of us were more surprised when, just as Buffy was about to open her mouth, Spike cut her off. "Don't. Just don't start."

I couldn't quite see her face from where I was, but somehow I knew she blinked quickly in that manner she has. "Why not?"

"Because there's nothing left worth saying, for either of us," he bit back. "You're moving on, you've found His Bastardness, excuse my bitter honesty, and you've fallen for him. But you can't expect me to be happy about the clear revelation that I was nothing more than the middle, so far, of a string of 'lads of the moment' who just happened to be convenient and fit your type. 'Centuries-old vampire with a dark past who might or might not be evil.'"

Buffy seemed to be quite at a loss now, and I was wondering if that was just because she'd missed most of Spike and my chase through Rome, or if there was something about **her** situation that both of _us_ were missing. "Um, uhh..." But she wasn't really able to head off Spike's rant.

"And you know what else, Miss 'Attain-a-thon'?" He stared fiercely into her eyes, until she shook her head slightly. "_I hope you get burnt_. I **really** do." And with that, he stalked off.

"Idiot," I mumbled under my breath, taking another path through the passages of the school myself, so as not to embarass Buffy by letting her realize that I had heard.

#

"Hello there, sir..." I looked up and smiled to see Faith walking towards me. "Mister hot shot big wig CEO, how was your day?" She grinned teasingly at me.

We had set our trap for a Velerian sorcerer in a typical abandoned warehouse. Willow had set up the protective dome in the middle of the gigantic open space, with Spike, Illyria, and Groo. All of the rest of us were up on the catwalks, watching and waiting, protected from mystical observation by a cloaking spell. This warehouse was only about a block ahead of the leading edge of horde activity. It wouldn't be too long before things started to happen.

I pulled my thoughts away from the tactical situation and thought about Faith's question. "Actually, all casual evidence to the contrary, it's been a better day than any other for a year."

"I get that," Faith replied. "Fighting the good fight, making a difference. Getting the blood pumping in your veins... among other places." She looked down pointedly, and I realized that I was still carrying a plain black mug about one quarter filled with cow's blood. Took another sip.

"You done good, brother," Faith continued, surprising me. "That road to redemption that you're always talking about... the road you helped me find. Looks to me like you've only got a few more steps to go."

"I'm not so sure about that," I protested. "Doesn't seem like I've gotten very far at all. And it's not the kind of road that just ends."

"We'll see," Faith shrugged that one off.

"So, what about you?" I continued. "What have you been up to since the hellmouth went crashing down?"

"Oh, I keep busy," Faith said with a soft laugh. "I've started patrolling the hellmouth mark 2 actually. That's in Cleveland, by the way."

"Yeah, I've heard."

"Got a cool pad, a bit of a day job at the Y W... secret identity, the whole nine yards." She chuckled again. "A few slayers of the next generation to look after - I can't handle the whole schoolmistress watcher deal, but if there are any girls who just need to be shown how to take care of themselves in a fight, they can send them to me."

"I bet," I agreed with a smile.

"And, well, there's a guy in the picture," she added cagily after a moment. "We got a bit of an unusual deal... you know me and the L word - or the C word..."

"Pretty much."

Gentleman friend? Never thought I'd hear Faith say that phrase... boy toy, yes, more than once, but... "Gentleman friend?"

"...but we hang out, and have fun, and kill a lot of nasty creatures together," Faith finished. "Spike might have mentioned him, actually, they were both in Sunnydale around the same time. Robin Wood? Friend of Buffy's... platonic, mostly - orphaned son of a Slayer from the 70s?"

"Umm, yes, actually." Spike hadn't had much good to say about him, but I didn't see any reason to point that out. "So you like him, huh?"

"Yeah, yeah, he has his moments," she agreed.

"Then I'm happy for you," I told her. "By the way... um, do you know what's been going on with Dana since she left LA? I'm not sure whether to go over and say hi or, you know, keep my distance in case she gets confused again and attacks me."

Faith made a face. "Umm, to be honest, I didn't even know that she's been here before. New 'cruit, joined the team just a few months ago... she made the rounds with pretty much all of the original crew, except for Xander... Willow, Giles, then Buffy."

"Okay," I nodded. "Did you hear anything about... well, she was in a mental asylum. They were trying to keep her restrained in there after she got her full Slayer powers."

"Oh." Faith absorbed this. "No, I thought I was the only Chosen one who ever went off the deep end... joking, I know it's not quite the same deal."

I paused and changed the subject slightly. "What about the last one? I mean, what's she doing here, why's she risking her neck to save us? I don't think she's ever met any of my crew before - does she have relatives here in Los Angeles?"

"Kennedy? No, she's here because of Willow. Protective-like. Willow was bound and determined to come, so Kennedy is here to back her up... Did you hear that?"

I hadn't, (so much for heightened vampire senses,) but when I actually started to listen there was no mistaking the sound. A thunderous banging on the warehouse wall, about forty feet down from the doors. Were these monsters so dumb that they'd bash their way in before even looking for a door? (Then again, going in by the front door can be a good way to walk into an ambush.)

Sure enough, soon a huge opening had been beaten out of the solid bricks, and a pack of trolls started to spread out around the warehouse floor, while a pair of ogres waited menacingly just inside. It didn't take the trolls long to find the dome... they peered and prodded at it, punched and body-blocked it without results. One even jumped onto it and started scampering up the rough side, which apparently was crossing a line - the dome reacted with a furious jolt of force that sent the poor individual flying.

Quickly a few trolls were left to stand watch while everyone else left... presumably to report this phenomenon to a higher-up. Faith excused herself and left to talk to someone else.

I looked down the catwalk the other way, and saw Mattasee, Virginia's student, the young demon. He had volunteered to join us in the field for this part of the mission, though he didn't seem quite sure why he cared so much. At the time, I hadn't asked many questions, knowing that going up against one of these Velerian sorcerers we could use all the majikal know-how we could get.

"Umm... Mattasee. You'll let me know as soon as you sense anyone with majikal powers approaching the building?" I started, a little awkwardly.

"Ermm..." He, also, flicked a glance at the mug in my hand, and in frustration I drained it and set it aside. "Yes, yes, of course."

"Thanks," I said. There was a bit of an awkward silence. "So... how did you end up studying with Miss Bryce? I don't... I don't even know very much about the Vegrar people, except that you're generally not terribly aggressive."

He smiled at me, but I wasn't quite sure what emotion lay underneath that smile. "Well, I grew up in a 'kalbos', a traditional Vegrar... I suppose you could call it a family unit, with a little bit of a stretch. Two adult males, two adult females, seven offspring total, including me. It was a strict kalbos, which means that the offspring never leave, never see anyone but their broodmates and the adults of the kalbos, until they reach their maturity at 400 lunar cycles."

"That's... " I did a little mental math. "Thirty-four years?"

"More like thirty-two actually. I didn't quite reach maturity in the kalbos, though. One of the mothers was an enchantress, and started teaching me majik as well as the usual disciplines of combigeometry, algebrulus, quasibiology and socioeconomics." He took a deep breath. "She overdosed on dark wizardry and destroyed the kalbos nest, killing many of its members. I escaped, but for many - years - I struggled with the lure of black magic myself. An acquaintance of mine on the street, a human, joined Virginia's program - I'm not sure how, and he sought me out. At first I didn't want to enlist; I found her strict philosophy much too confining. But after very nearly getting myself on the hit list of the Fell brethren, I realized that I needed a bit more structure in my existence. Miss Bryce has been amazing to me."

"And you seem to be doing well with the white wizardry," I remarked. "Just how much can you do?"

He shrugged humbly. "My specialty is divinatory and information magic, though I've been branching out into constructive alchemy. I should have a few surp... Oh, hello? Who do you want to talk to, me or him?"

I turned about to see the ghost of Doyle waiting patiently. "Actually, I'm carrying a message for you, young sir. Miss Rosenberg said that she wanted to talk to you through the dome."

"Oh, of course." He nodded at me. "If you'll excuse me?"

"Umm, just a second," I said, frowning. "Through the dome, as in, just on either side? Because, well, forgive me for stating the obvious, but you can't leave the cloaked area up here on the catwalks."

"Oh, no, not like that," Matt assured me. "I'll stay in the cloak... the witch and I agreed on one small 'channel' for conferences and this sort of thing. There's a spot on a particular catwalk... technically the cloak is weakened slightly there, though it's still just about impossible to notice unless you're looking from the right 'angle.'"

"Which is the one leading directly away from the dome," I guessed. "Okay. Just wanted to be clear on that." Mattasee turned around and left, and I turned to Doyle; after a few seconds I burst out into nervous laughter. "I'm sorry, man, it's just so weird to see you there... and to see through you, ever so slightly. Everyone else I've only lost a few months ago at most, but you..."

"I know, man," Doyle agreed with a cheerful smile. "S'been too long. But I gotta tell you, friend - I couldn't be more proud of you. Sure, you've made a few mis-steps along the way, but who doesn't? I - well, in a way I think that I was the one who got you started on this great adventure..."

"You were," I agreed softly.

"And I think that I'll be here to see the end of it."

"I'm not so sure," I countered, shaking my head. "I'm not dead. And if Illyria's plan works, then it isn't the end of anything."

"I think it will be," Doyle insisted firmly. "And the beginning of something entirely different. I know that I only got to know you for a few months, but to everything there is a season. It was my time to pass on."

"Will you guys stop doing that?" I asked with a grin. "Going on and on about how everything's 'meant to be.' It's really annoying."

"Sorry man, but it's a little hard to get where I've been and not feel that way. If I could only tell you some of the things that I've done, the places that I've seen... but regs don't allow for it." He sobered. "I know that it was harder for you an' Cordy, being the ones left behind, but you came to terms with the fact that I'd gone in good time."

"I think about that," I blurted out. "Not coming to terms with other people's deaths, but the afterlife itself. I've been dead at least once, and from what I understand, when I accidentally revoked the curse in Sunnydale, my soul would have reverted to the great beyond again."

"I think that's right," Doyle agreed. "Can't say for sure, but..."

"Then why don't I remember anything about it?" I asked. "Not peace and paradise, not torture and torment, not even timeless waiting in some dreary purgatory. I have no recollections of either of those periods, except for the memories of... of the soul-less vampire."

"I think you're a special case, man," Doyle assured me. "Memory's a bit of a tricky thing with souls in the afterlife, or at least it's very different from mortal memory. Getting re-joined to a vampire body that's been active and aware the whole time - it probably wipes out or represses your soul memory." He shook his head. "Try not to worry about it, man."

"I'll second that," Cordy said, _whooshing_ straight through me to take Doyle's arm. "You always did brood too much."

I smiled at both of them. "So tell me. Are you guys really... you know, a couple now?"

"Yeah, yeah," Cordy agreed, turning to look into Doyle's face. Doyle just grinned like an idiot.

"It's kinda weird, I have to admit," I mentioned. "Thinking about people... you know, dating up there. It is 'up', right?"

"Not physically up, but symbolically," Doyle assured me. "As far as romance... well, in a lot of ways it's like this world. Just... you know..."

"Better!" Cordy finished his thought, making one of her cute faces.

I laughed. "What about Wesley and Fred?"

"Well, bear in mind that he's only been deceased a few hours," Doyle started. "Sometimes time passes much more quickly for us, but this hasn't been one of those. They're both still getting used to him being..."

"...On the other hand, they **were** dating when she died," Cordelia pointed out. "Somehow I doubt that things won't go the same way again."

"I'm happy for them," I said, and then spotted someone off on an intersecting catwalk. "Excuse me - I really want to talk to you guys more later, but..."

"Go right ahead," Doyle insisted, and I hurried past them.

"Can I have a word?" I asked softly when I caught up with Buffy.

She just stood there for a moment, looking at me, and then nodded. "Umm... how about over there?" Over at one end of one of the catwalks nearby was a small, mostly enclosed metal box, just big enough for a few people to sit in. "Are you gonna throw a hissy fit too?" she asked as soon as I had stepped inside.

I paused just a moment, then tried to relax as I sat down. "Actually, nope." Decided to not dance around the subject of what I'd heard. "Seeing Spike play the drama queen card made me realize that I really don't want to do it too." A smiled, and she nodded in acceptance. "I do have a few questions though."

Buffy shook her head. "Maybe it'd be better if I try to explain some things first... it's a confusing and embarassing situation. Okay, um, the Immortal." She took a deep breath. "At some point, after realizing that I'd moved into 'his town', the Immortal decided that he **desired** me." She put a shadow of a bass rumble on the emphasized word, and shook her head in near disbelief. "Came up with a heck of an opening gambit too, in the form of some unsolicited assistance. On a case involving a deadly cult of chaos worshippers and a set of manuscripts detailing the activities of vampire slayers over three thousand years ago."

I thought about the way _he_ had gotten involved in the capo caper, without even asking. "Yeah, that seems to be a favorite move of his lately, just butting in helpfully."

"Well, anyway, I kinda wanted to find out more about him, once he involved himself in my business. Just to kind of figure him out, see what his motives were. And to try to guess if he would get all furious and take it out on other Slayers if I rejected him. So the obvious ploy was to..."

"To let him think he was courting you," I said, seeing it, and kicking myself mentally. "And did you realize that you were also letting three quarters of Rome think that the two of you were an item?"

"To be honest, it was a while before I even realized that they cared," Buffy admitted. "Still used to America, where people won't even let themselves believe that a vampire slayer exists, let alone make her a quasi-celebrity. But things are different in Europe, and the Italians apparently love to gossip even more than high school girls."

"So, umm... I've put an end to the gambit, or at least I hope I have. Didn't reject him outright, but extricated myself as well as I could with flattery... his world is so mysterious and dangerous, but I'm not sure I'm ready for it... that I don't trust myself around his incredible charisma and obvious prowess, yadda yadda yah. Hopefully that'll buy me a little time to think of a new angle at least. Oh, and he mentioned that the two of you were in town after you'd left, and bragged about the whole Darla/Drusilla thing. Frankly, that's the point where I'd realized I'd learned all I needed to know, and where I got the idea for how to get rid of him a while."

"Okay..." I was starting to put things together, and still not quite sure of how one thing added up. "So Andrew just heard the gossip around town about you and the Immortal, and bought into it?"

"Andrew lives in a world of his own that has very little to do with what the rest of us consider to be reality," Buffy said flatly. "It started with the gossip, but no matter what I said to him about the situation, he just took that as further confirmation that I was 'in love,' sheesh! By the way, I'm sorry that you had to deal with him about the whole Dana situation, but he was the best field agent we had who could get to Los Angeles in time." She paused for a beat. "We need more field agents."

"It's alright," I assured her, then thought I might try to tease gently. "And the dozen Slayers you sent him as backup?"

"Were not meant for a power play against you," she hastily pointed out, "not that I exactly chewed him out for the way things went down there. I got as many Slayers as I could down to LA because I thought that they'd be good for trying to track down Dana, sympathizing with her... and if necessary, subduing her. Having been through some of the same stuff themselves, you know. But I couldn't allow you to keep custody of her, not that I don't have faith in the good intentions of you and all of your own team..."

"Um, well, what then?"

Buffy paused momentarily, her face expressive in her moment of lethologica. "Well, you guys already had quite a lot on your plate, right? You wouldn't be able to take care of her by yourself; you'd be handing her over to specialist with 'the firm.' And I had no way of being sure that she wouldn't fall into the wrong hands from there... gotta be a bunch of clients and employees of Wolfram and Hart who would love to have access to an unstable Slayer... to turn her strength to dark purposes."

"Hmm... I guess I hadn't really thought of it that way," I admitted. "And I'm glad that Dana seems to be doing better."

"Yeah, she is. Still has a bit of a loopy anger thing going on inside her head, but she only lets it out when it's time to pound on the bad guys. And yes, her teachers have paid extra care to identifying bad guys and telling them apart from scary but good guys."

"Well, we all make a few mistakes on that score," I admitted. "Not that it's any of my business, but I'm sorry that Spike's being such a pain in the ass about the whole thing."

"Well, I can't imagine you're too broken up about the fact that you're looking pretty good by comparison," Buffy teased.

"Umm... not exactly, but it's actually not all about competition over you, when it comes to Spike and me. The past little while, oh, for cripe's sake we've actually bonded as partners. I kinda respect him, and whatever you and he had, and I don't really want to see him throw it away over a misunderstanding!"

The shock on Buffy's face was quite obvious. "Well, there's no way I can stop you from saying something to him about it, I guess. Give him a fair chance to try and set things right, make up a portion of what he lost with that blunder." She paused. "Speaking of making up for blunders, well... about the whole Fred/Illyria thing."

Ahh. "Yeah, go on?"

"I've gathered that the ending is considered to be water under the bridge, but I can't help but think that our side still has some apologies to make over the way that things were handled."

I started to protest, then dropped it and nodded. I was still a little upset about that myself, to be honest.

"Some of the responsibility is mine. As I'm sure you've realized, all of us who knew you were very... concerned when we found out about the deal you'd taken with Wolfram and Hart. Not that anybody doubted that your heart was in the right place..."

"It is, but it's just kinda sitting there and not doing much," I broke in. Buffy shot me an annoyed look. "Not really the right time for vampire humor?"

"No." Buffy shook her head and tried to find a place to continue. "But the only reason we could see that they'd have offered the deal was to corrupt you. On the other hand, you've made it very clear that Los Angeles is your town, and you don't appreciate having anyone else, even me, tell you how to handle your business."

I had to admit that much was true. "You could always have called me to a summit meeting, if you were that worried. Neutral ground and all that. I always cared about what you thought, Buffy, even if sometimes I didn't agree with your solutions."

She nodded. "I did think about that, a few times recently, but things have been so busy. I told the guys that if you called, I wanted to be the only one you spoke to... but as it happened, I wasn't reachable at the time, and I gather that Giles took it as an excuse to get snippy. He was more worried than any of us, but he does have a tendency to obsess about the worst when it comes to you."

"I can see why," I commented.

"Willow was really torn up when she realized that she was too late," Buffy admitted in a low voice. "I think she kinda had an unrequited crush on Fred, from the time she came down here to save your soul again. Not that she isn't happy with Kennedy, of course - it's just one of those things, you know?"

"Yeah, I guess I do," I admitted. For some reason that reminded me of the fact that Fred herself used for some reason to have a thing for me, at least according to Cordelia. Back when I'd first brought her home from Pylea, which kinda made sense. I got back to the subject. "Well, thanks. It really helps to have heard where you were comi-" Just at that moment there was a knock on the metal wall of the box. "What is it?"

The unfamiliar slayer poked her head in. "Hey, Buff. Just wanted to ask your opinion about ambush attack patterns."

"All right," As she was getting up, Buffy turned to me. "You should probably weigh in too."

#

We all watched as the figure, shrouded in dark robes, walked briskly into the warhouse below through the doors, crossed over to the dome, examined it for a few minutes, and then left the way that he had come. "Andarpin warlock," Wesley whispered to me, and I nearly jumped off the catwalk... I hadn't realized he was there. "Gone to make his report. Hopefully, the next to arrive should be the Velerian."

"At the head of a task force, probably," I muttered.

"No, probably just a squadron. I doubt Lilah wants to commit too many of her forces to a location of our choosing lest it should prove to be a deathtrap." He chuckled to himself. "Of course, she couldn't possibly realize what kind of a trap we have in store."

"I hope not," I agreed.

"You look concerned, Angel," he said softly, following as I headed down yet another catwalk, or possibly one of the same ones as before all over again.

"I'm replaying it all over in my head," I admitted. "Especially... well, just after I told you guys that what I wanted to destroy the Circle, they..."

"The scroll that they demanded you sign," he filled in. "The one that they said was the real prophecy about a vampire with a soul getting to be human as a reward - and that by signing it, you would never get that reward, should it happen to be about you."

"Damnit, what did you do, like review the last day of my life as soon as you got to heaven?" I burst out. "Don't you have better things to do?"

"It isn't like that," he said. "Somehow we just... know, the things we need to. I know about that. It's been said that death is a moment of one-ness with the universe and the totality of history."

"So," I muttered, a little upset. "Do you know if it... is it real? Does my signing that scroll actually... can it actually change things?"

"I'm afraid that it does," he told me sadly. "It is not really the 'original' - since when does signing the original of a prophecy change anything? It's actually an obscure sort of a mystically binding codicil... as long as your signature remains on that scroll, it can keep you from realizing the promised reward mentioned in the prophecy... assuming that it was about you in the first place."

"Damn it," I growled. "Was hoping that you could tell me it was all a bluff. Oh well. It still had to be done."

"Of course, destroying the codicil would nullify its effect," Wesley mentioned, "but I'm not sure how we could arrange that. I can't even tell you where it is - doesn't seem to have been at the offices of Wolfram and Hart when they were destroyed, or at the locales of any of the Black Thorn members."

"It's okay," I told him. "I was never doing this for a reward in the first place. Uhm, Natasha?" I looked at her as she hurried up to the two of us.

"Wanted to make sure you heard this - Aaron got another message from the powers. Seems to relate to our plans with the Velerian sorcerer."

"Hmmm." Wesley's face creased in thought. "What's the text?"

"'Things will move quickly, and his power is great. You will have to react even more quickly if you hope to prevent him from taking lives.'"

"Well, we're already planning to move as quickly as we can," I said thoughtfully. "We'll make sure to pass that message along to everyone involved."

Wesley nodded. "I'll get started on that."

"Um, so, Natasha," I said. "Do you mind if I ask how you met Aaron? It hasn't really come up... you said that you were training a potential Slayer until last year..."

"Right," she confirmed. "Well, after we got Shannon into Sunnydale, I was a bit at loose ends, and Groo wanted to head south towards Los Angeles. We'd both heard stories of strange stuff going on here... rain of fire, sun blotted out, and Groo thought that you guys, and Cordelia, might be in the thick of it."

"Yeah, that's one way to put it," I muttered under my breath. Natasha shot me a look, but I didn't really want to explain, so I just made a 'go on' motion. After a pause and a shrug, she did.

"We ended up in a suburb pretty far on the outskirts just as the cult of Jasmine was building up. As it happened, though there were quite a few people who'd seen _her_ on tv broadcasts from the city or heard her on the radio, a much larger section of the town had caught wind of the whole business and were suspicious of it, to the point of staying clear of all media."

"Huh, interesting," I muttered. "Didn't know there were places like that." Jasmine had been... well, she had looked like a beautiful and regal woman, her soul coming from some dimensional realm faraway, her body born of Cordelia and my son Connor... which pregnancy had ultimately been the cause of Cordy's death - her body had been drained of energy to form Jasmine's vessel early. But nobody could see or hear Jasmine or even be near her without worshipping and adoring her - not without an infusion of Jasmine or Cordelia's blood in their system, at least.

"It didn't last long," she said in an aside. "As Jasmine's power grew, I think she was able to manifest her influence without audiovisual contact... to convert someone through a face to face conversation with an already-converted proxy, for example, or eventually to just concentrate and send a field of her energy across a large area, taking everyone. At the time, though, Groo and I stuck around, definitely suspicious to the point of paranoia ourselves." She took a deep breth at this point.

"I happened to see a pack of Jasminites setting out through the streets, and we followed them as they broke into a house. At first I thought it was an attempt at forced conversion... to turn on a television for one of Jasmine's personal appearances and wrestle a family in front of it, that sort of thing. By the time we realized it was murder they had in mind, it was almost too late."

"Murder?" I repeated. "But Jasmine didn't... well, there were her 'personal guests,' but..."

"I know... her movement was rarely directed towards violence against humans, even the unconverted... just 'enlightening' them. They scourged out demons, of course... but it was quite clear that this band of Jasmine acolytes tried to kill him. Aaron, I mean."

"I wondered," I mentioned. "Of course... if Aaron was a link to the Powers, the ones that Jasmine had betrayed and turned her back on, maybe she couldn't afford to let him live, even under her influence."

"Wait," Natasha broke in. "She **betrayed** the Powers that Be?"

"Uh, yeah. She said... and as far as I've been able to work out, she was probably telling the truth this far," I qualified, "that she was one of the ancient Powers... that she was fed up with sitting back, passively watching, only doing the smallest amount possible to help the mortal creatures in all the worlds. That she had come here to show mankind the way to peace, happiness, brotherhood and love, and all that."

"Wow," Natasha muttered, clearly awed by all that. "I would have guessed she was really a moth'lar demon, myself."

I smiled at the thought. "Jasmine may have had her heart in the right place, and a big heart to boot, but that didn't make her any less dangerous. The path that she wanted to put humanity on..." I sighed, trying to find the best way to put it. "It wouldn't have been our own paradise, freely chosen, and that makes it hollow." Pause. "Plus the fact that she was eating people to sustain her earthly body and persuasive powers..."

"Eating people!" she exploded. "And you still believe that she wanted the best for us? Ranchers treat cattle pretty well, and keep them from fighting each other - but not for any altruistic reasons."

"She didn't need to take over the world just to have a safe food source," I replied. "Plus, if all we really were was meat to her, that would have come out once all of her plans were ruined. Creepy as it was, she **did** care. I think she even regretted the people eater part."

"Well, I don't tend to give the benefit of the doubt to any creature for whom I would fit on the menu... and no, you don't count because you don't drink human blood yourself."

"Stay clear of cows," I joked. "Think they might feel the same way."

"That's why I'm a vegan," she smirked. "Anyway... once we rescued Aaron, Groo and I pretty much turned ourselves around and headed back out of the Los Angeles area. Especially after I had heard about Jasmine's powers of persuasion increasing - I didn't want to put him at risk from either of us. Groo promised me that he'd protect the boy, even from me, and I hoped that as a part demon, he'd be immune to the effect..."

"I'm not so sure," I put in. "I fell under her spell, for a while there... though my soul is human. But so did... our friend Lorne, and he's one hundred percent pure dethwokk demon."

"Ahh. Just as well that we seemed to have been able to outrun her influence, then," Natasha mentioned. "Until one minute that must have been very near the end... Groo and I both went under - she must have gone global right then."

"With the worldwide news address, you mean?" I asked.

"Yes, I think so. We didn't have a television on at the time, but that didn't seem to matter. Maybe drawing billions of people into unity gave her the power to find us and convert us. Fortunately, Aaron himself wasn't affected, and he was able to fend both of us off until Jasmine's power crashed, shortly afterwards." She smiled. "Should I thank you for that?"

"Not necessary."

"But I skipped to the end of the story there. We asked Aaron if he had any idea why the Jazmaniacs had targeted him, and he couldn't explain it. It was much later, when he mentioned that he'd been having problems in school, that things started to fit into place. His parents had taken him to specialists and put him on medication for schizophrenia."

"Schizo..." I made the connection. "Hearing voices."

"Yes. The way we worked it out, the doctor was converted by Jasmine, and she recognized the signs. The drugs were pretty effective at suppressing his link to the Powers that Be, but she thought that he represented a threat anyway."

She paused briefly, then continued. "Once the threat from Jasomine was over, we took Aaron back to his parents, and tried to explain that the voices were not a sign of mental illness, but a gift - a heavy gift to carry, and one that he had to learn how to deal with, but still something to be treasured rather than repressed. It took a long time and a lot of arguing, but they started to support his working with me after a few months, and he's come along amazingly since then."

I blinked. Somehow I had pictured Aaron wandering around with Natasha and Groo ever since then, not living with his parents and going to high school... "And he 'heard' a warning about us getting in trouble this morning, and you spent all day figuring out what they meant?" I repated.

"Pretty much," she agreed. "And what to do about them... the signs were clear that to move too hastily might lead us to our own deaths. Tracking down where you were, trying to get a rough understanding of what you might be doing and what might threaten you... and then we lost track of everybody amidst all the action around midnight... uhh, hello?"

I looked up and saw Doyle and Fred coming towards us - an unusual pairing, considering that they'd definitely never have had a chance to meet in life. But they had friends in common both here and in the beyond, and I guess that had been enough. "Hey, where's Cordy?" I asked, a little irrelevantly.

"She popped into the dome, to chat up **her** boyfriend," Fred giggled, nodding teasingly at Natasha.

"Ahh, right," I nodded. Clearly nothing romantic was likely to happen at the moment between Cordy and Groo, but they had a long and confusing history together, and this was a unique opportunity for each of them to get a little closure. "So, Fred... looks like you've been settling into the afterlife all right."

"Frankly, it's still more than a little confusing," she admitted. "Just like when I first arrived at UCLA or when you brought me back to Los Angeles after livin' in my cave in Pylea for so long. Big, and complicated, and not working according to any rules that I understand yet." She turned and smiled, and I realized that she was looking at Wesley, who was talking to Faith and Kennedy. "But so long as there's people who I know there and who love me, that's home."

"Then you're still home here, too," I whispered softly.

"Awww... that might be the nicest thing anybody ever said ta me in all mah born days," she drawled. "Though... come to think of it, not sure if this really qualifies as one of my born days... do your born days end when you die?"


	4. Chapter 4

Mattasee glided up to me silently. "He's coming."

I smiled grimly. "Then it's showtime." Somewhat to my surprise, everyone up on the catwalks was already moving to their assigned places. What the...

I've linked us all mentally, Mattasee told me silently. Helps with co-ordinaton in a situation like this.

I blinked in surprise, then nodded approval at him. Any idea who's with the sorcerer? I tried to send back.

No, I can't 'sense' anyone but him. But we'll find out soon enough.

We did. The warehouse door was slid all the open, and the Velerian Sorcerer's party headed in, unconcerned about anything but the dome and its contents.

I counted seven highly trained vampire warriors in his escort... not the ninjas who we'd met earlier, but experts in a European swordsman's tradition... possibly the Order of Dessike. **So much the better for us... we've got plenty of experience in this party dealing with vampires of all sorts.** I couldn't tell if that was my own though or from someone else in the link.

Moving on... three humanoid demons - not trolls but possibly some variant of the Kyxxar genus - hobgoblin like, wiry and tough. Probably pretty smart fighters. Two lizard-heads, and...

Who's the faded chick in the vinyl pumps? the question came, from Kennedy I think.

I squatted down and peered underneath the handrail, trying to get a better look and confirm the face of Lilah Morgan. Don't worry - she's executive management. Won't get involved once the fighting starts.

My own attention was drawn to the figure who had to be the sorcerer himself, an impposing man wearing a long black cape. At least he seemed like a man... from what I knew about the Velerian guild they didn't discriminate by species, so he might be Homo Sapiens or some variety of demon that looked much the same. (I didn't figure any Velerian for altering his appearance artificially.) Of course, he didn't come from our earth, but Wesley had told me that many dimensions had apparently evolved humans convergently.

I motioned the group to move aside slightly... and then realized that the motion was unnecessary - as soon as I'd made the decision they were following it. The sorcerer was approaching the dome, and... _now_!

I leapt off the catwalk, sword in hand, and sliced the arm off of a lizardhead as I landed. Everything was happening at once. Projectiles were being shot by those who remained up on the catwalks - arrows from the bows of Mattasee and Faith, crossbow quarrels from Giles, seeking out the hearts of the vampires. Natasha was firing grenades at the demons. Meanwhile, the three other Slayers and I were down on the ground, mopping up the survivors. In bare seconds it was over - only the four of us, the sorcerer, and Lilah remained standing. Lilah was dumbstruck, stock still. Dana seemed to have been wounded... a lizard-head spear entry in her lower side was bleeding, but she was on her feet and backing carefully away from the action - and a hobgoblin and the lizard-head were lying dead where she had been.

Doyle appeared, about twenty feet away from the sorcerer, and concentrated. The talisman around his neck, an impressive pendant with intricate golden carvings and large red jewels, floated up slightly into the air, and then the chain slipped out from around his neck and over the sorcerer's head. It began to float towards Doyle - but only an instant, because the sorcerer reached out and grabbed it. I moved closer as quickly as I could. The dome dropped, leaving Willow, Spike, Groo, and Illyria in plain sight, and the sorcerer gestured at Doyle, staggering him. The talisman now swung straight down from his hand.

I knew I'd only have one shot at this. My truesilver sword was still in my hand. and I slashed out vehemently, the mithril edge slicing through bone as easily as if it were made of hard butter. Most of the sorcerer's forearm fell to the floor, along with the hand and the talisman. Willow gestured, and the pendant flew swift and sure into her own grasp.

That was the most important step down - we had gotten the talisman away from him, without any damage to it. Now we just had to keep it. The rest of the group dropped down to join us, and we formed into a loose circle around the dangerous magician, densest in the direction where Willow hung back, still carrying his prize.

All of a sudden, the sorcerer struck with magik. A field of black power streamed from him towards the ones that were blocking his way - Giles, Kennedy, Groo, Mattasee, Natasha, and a tiny edge of the spell catching Spike, draining the energy away from them. There would be only moments to keep that dread spell from claiming lives - I was to the side, and struck out again with my sword, but it simply bounced off of a force shield that was surrounding the sorcerer to all sides. Buffy and Faith, behind him, were having no better luck.

It was Illyria who took action, stepping into the edge of the energy field and right through the shield. (Whether she was immune to it as a demon, or whether it was only weapons that were blocked and not people I couldn't tell.) She put one of her hands on each of the sorcerer's shoulders and simply _pulled_ her arms apart. One of the sorcerer's arms and some of his rib cage tore away, and the magikal effects ceased almost immediately.

Suddenly remembering something, I turned to face Lilah, who instantly blinked away again. Well, no time to worry about her right now. I hurried over to join those who were attending to the wounded.

"They'll all recover," Willow said, "but not soon." She turned to face Buffy and myself, and I could see the worry for Giles and Kennedy in her face. "We can't waste the time getting them to an enchanted portal... I think I should teleport them back to the haven."

Buffy considered a moment. "How're you doing on power?"

"Not outstanding," she admitted, "but I've got reserves I haven't even touched, courtesy of the Devon girls. I'll be okay."

"It makes sense," Buffy agreed, and turned to me for confirmation. I nodded.

"I should go too," Dana said, frowning at her wound. "Got stupid, and let myself be hurt."

"You were unlucky," Buffy said, "and you did your part well."

Dana accepted this with a nod and some motion of her hand that seemed almost like a salute. "Nice to see you again, Mister Angel." I nodded back, smiling.

"Now, don't you go blipping me back to the penalty box, Red," Spike insisted, flexing his shoulder, which seemed a little stiff. "I got tagged by the edge of that, true, but 'm still in fighting condition, and I mean to be there at the end of this thing."

"All right, all right," Willow assured him. "One less body to move is fine by me." She concentrated, and the five wounded disappeared with an audible _pop_. Willow smiled. "They arrived safely."

"Then we should move quickly," Illyria pointed out. "Ms Morgan may not know what we intend to do with this, but it can hardly be of minor concern to her that we have schemed toward, and succeeded in, winning such a rare and valuable artifact." Illyria handed the talisman to me with a significant look. "She may well increase the number and strength of her forces protecting the gate."

"You keep that," I told her. "You're the one who's going to need it, and you'll know when to use it."

"There's a lot more activity out there than when I put up the dome," Willow said, frowning in the direction of the warehouse door, though there wasn't anything much to see there... but she was probably reacting to a more witchly sense altogether.

"Well, they're not going to go away now," I said, agreeing with Illyria. I spent just a second to look over the team... Buffy, Faith, and Willow - Spike and Illyria. And myself. Aside from the ghosts (who weren't that much help when it came to melee,) it was down to the six of us. I'd have much preferred to have had Kennedy and Groo along - and even Rupert Giles and some of the others were good for watching your back. But that wasn't the way it had played out... and there was a certain poetic resonance to the final roster. Each of us had played a unique and pivotal role in the events of the past seven years or so that had led to this moment... some of us had so much history together, and some were virtually strangers, but...

"Let's move out," I announced. This was no time to get lost in nostalgia.

"Well, that's a fine sentiment," Spike piped up. "But move **how** exactly? As I make it, we're more than eight miles away from your Hyperion hotel - and there's a horde of demons filling the streets between here and there, and beyond... just looking for us so that they can kill us all flat. Do we really plan to travel on foot the whole way? Because I'm always up for a good fight, but that sounds more like a way to get squashed."

I grimaced... that was something that I hadn't thought of. I'd been so busy worrying about how we were going to get the best of the Velerian that I hadn't even been paying attention to where this warehouse was... though if Spike said it was yea far away from our final target, he was probably right, or fairly close at least.

"Sounds like a job for me again," Willow said with a wan smile.

"You sure Will?" Buffy asked her nervously.

"Spike's got a point," Willow said. "Rapid, safe travel towards the hotel is pretty much required. Therefore, it's an efficient use of resources." She frowned, concentrating. "The portal will mess up any attempt to materialize too close, though. Orbing is probably our best bet, though even that won't..." Something made her start giggling. "Yeah, that'll do as well as anything! Okay, everybody corporeal link hands," she instructed. "You ghosts can follow your own way, right?"

"I think so, yes," Wesley agreed as a rough circle formed... Illyria took Willow's right hand, and was followed by Spike, myself, Faith, and Buffy, who linked back up to Willow, completing the chain.

"Take a deep breath," Willow advised, and there was only enough time to do so before her magic took hold. (I'll take a moment to clean up one misunderstanding here... vampires can and do breathe, though we have no need of oxygen and are unaffected by many types of gas, smoke, etcetera. We sometimes even need to breathe in order to shout or yell, though the vampire adaptation seems to have a strange effect on the voice box allowing its use without air passage through the throat in some circmstances. Can't get much volume that way though. Okay, done talking about that.)

The orb transportation was weird - at first it seemed as if the world around us had broken apart and was swirling into chaos, and then I was sure that it was the reverse, that I had broken into tiny little bits of matter and energy that were streaming through the city. Before it was done, I was convinced that location was meaningless, that 'here' and 'there' were only states of mind and that the entire universe would fit comfortably inside inside a single grain of sand, if you just knew how to pack it right.

When I was pretty confident that I had achieved the 'there' state of mind, we were standing on what looked like the second floor of a half-completed building, looking out at the sea of monsters below because there wasn't a wall there yet. "Everybody on board," Willow said.

"On board what?" Illyria asked, taking the words out of my mouth. I looked, and realized that Willow had stepped onto a huge wooden board, roughly triangular in shape and symmetric. About fifteen feet long from tip to end and nine feet wide at the base, it was big enough for all seven of us to stand on at the same time all right. But...

"On board?" I repeated. "Is this thing going to be moving?"

"With the help of a little witchcraft, you'd better believe it's gonna move," Buffy assured us. "Good idea, Willow."

I looked out at the demons once again. "If we're going to be flying on this thing... those guys are going to try to jump on board or do whatever else they can to stop us or bring us down."

"Then it's our job to make sure that that doesn't happen," Faith pointed out, grabbing a large axe from a pile of weapons conveniently nearby - had Willow arranged that too? "Who gets to ride in the point?"

"You guys fight over it," Buffy said. "I'll take back right..." And she suited action to word, moving into position where she could defend Willow's flank. I looked at Spike, hesitating, and lost out as he strode over to mount at the Apex.

I got on in the middle of the right side, behind Spike, beside Faith, and in front of Willow and Buffy, with Illyria at the far left side. "No matter what, protect Willow," Faith advised us out loud. "If she can't concentrate totally on keeping us airborne... things will get bad in a hurry."

With that word of warning ringing in my head, the flying board seemed to launch itself out of the building and cruise down the street, twenty feet above the asphalt.

Immediately there were trolls and other demons jumping at the 'ship' from building rooftops... whoever was nearest just kind of knocked them aside or killed them by the quickest way possible. The close quarters forced an odd kind of formation fighting on us... Faith was close enough to touch and Spike, Willow, and Buffy were all within a few paces of me.

At one point, a shadow knight materialzed right between Spike and I, and it was a hell of a fight to get rid of him in time. Faith fook a nasty cut to her thigh in the process (which she bandaged with part of her shirt, of course, and did her best to shake off,) and I got a pretty bad crack on the head as well.

Nobody noticed that an assasing had managed to jump at us from the rear until she had tagged Willow on the back of her leg... nothing too serious as woulds went, but soon we realized that the pain was enough to distract her attention and keep her from maintaining flight control. We wobbled and dipped a bit, and then began to sail closer and closer to the ground. Buffy raced over to brace Willow against the sudden forward impact, and the rest of us just kinda rolled with it. I rushed over to Faith once the crash was over and checked to see if she was alright.

"Where are we, how close?" Spike asked. "I wasn't quite sure where we started."

"We have about seven blocks yet to travel," Illyria put in. I guess, being the uber-demon chick, she had a great sense of direction and spacial relations too. "But the horde is thick here, and the going will be difficult as soon as they..."

"Spot us," I finished, just as an assorted pack of bogeys came around the corner, let out a truly astonishing chorus of squeals and howls, and attacked. It was deadly and furious. I ended up trying to duke it out against a pair of rakers, (some of the deadliest creatures I've ever been up against,) as the chaotic melee fell down upon us.

I had just critically wounded one of the fiends with the sword and frightened the other off for a few seconds when I saw it. Buffy had been keeping a gawky humanoid with shaggy violet hair busy while Willow snuck up behind him. Snarling, the friendly (or so I usually thought of her,) witch grabbed this guy by one shoulder and plunged her other hand, it seemed, into his chest, sucking dark blue ether out.

Laughing wildly, Willow pushed him aside, and a burst of force emanating from her knocked all the remaning bad guys in the vicinity over, without affecting any of us. She looked around and flushed slightly. "Whoops, didn't even mean to do that," she muttered. She waved one hand in the air and chanted solemnly for about ten seconds.

"What was that one for?" Faith asked, a little wary of this whole business.

"I've set up decoys and a cloaking spell," Willow replied. "Come on, neither will last for long." And she led the way off towards the hotel.

Cordelia popped in just as we were leaving, looked around at what was left of the fight, and growled. "Not here. Dammit!"

"Um, Willow," I called, running after her. "One little thing about that cloaking spell... is there any way you can help the ghosts find us without the horde doing the same?"

#

"_**Owwww**_!" I clapped one hand to the tender side of my head and instinctively backed away. Shot a look at the nearest person, who happened to be Buffy, in search of sympathy. None at all.

"Serves you right for being careless," she muttered instead, and crept cautiously forward to investigate the magical phenomenon that had so cruelly injured me.

Well, first of all, it wasn't my fault. Some illusionist working for Wolfram and Hart had been filling the whole area with phantasms and mirages, (fighting back since Willow had started it, maybe,) and I was well and truly sick of stabbing my sword into things that weren't really there, just tricks on perception. So when a wall of flying short swords had suddenly appeared, barring our path, I had continued on as if they hadn't been there - and paid the price because they were real. One blade had sliced pretty deeply into my cranium and cracked skull - one of those hazards that would be deadly 'if I weren't a vampire.'

Our count of ground to cover before reaching the hotel had dropped down to something between two and one point six, but that was definitely the good news. A few enemy fiends had attacked us - presumably those with the ability to see through cloaking magic, but apparently with the decoys they hadn't been able to set up an effective hue and cry for us. However, after a little of that, apparently Lilah or whoever was in charge, had pulled most of the minions out of the area and begun opposing us with magic, which was doing a little better.

Faith shot a look over at Willow. "Power check?"

Willow sighed and frowned. "I'm starting to get low. Still got the booster, but that'll be most effective right when I first draw on it, and we still haven't gotten to the last line of defence, which is likely to be..."

"Got it," I muttered. "Well, there has to be another way past. We could, umm, welll..." I stalled, feeling everyone looking at me.

Spike laughed out loud. "How about **this**?" He dashed forward, but carefully, and reached out to grab one weapon by the hilt. It struggled against his grip with whatever magical force that had let it dance in the air unsupported, but Spike was stronger and wrestled it around. Grinning nastily, he hit one of the other swords several times hard with 'his' blade, and then let it go again.

I watched, curious. The first sword quickly resumed its place in the whirling, flashing deadly pattern. The one that had been hit did not, however. It broke formation to counterattack the first sword, and in the resulting bitter duel other swords were hit by accident, and each of these joined the action. Soon there was a full-scale brawl of magically floating swords taking place. Spike, Buffy and I each backed away slightly to avoid getting accidentally slashed ourselves.

"Very interesting, but where did that get us?" I pointed out. It would be even harder now to cross the swords without getting badly wounded.

"Just wait," Spike whispered, intent on the battle royale. "Little trick I picked up from Jasper St. Clair." I stood there and watched.

Suddenly I realized it. A number of the swords were moving with less energy and animation than before. Either going for the kill, outside of a defensive pattern, or getting hit by other enchanted swords was reducing their stamina. As we watched, each blade was reduced to flopping around on the asphalt like hooked fishes.

"Wow," Buffy breathed. "That's actually... how did you do that, Spike?"

"It's just something they put into these barriers," he muttered in full 'Cool Spike' mode, "and the people who know how can shut them down. Doesn't always work, but I thought it was worth having a go."

"Yeah, not bloody bad," Faith quipped, starting out over the strewn weapons... and stomping on one that feebly lifted blade to try and slash at her ankles. "Onward!"

"Yeah, enough talking, let's push it," Buffy agreed, following and breaking into a jog as she cleared the field of swords. I understood what she meant... every second we wasted at this point made less ground that we would gain before the bad guys could cook up another nasty delaying tactic. But I let Spike, Illyria and Dana run on ahead, falling in beside Willow, who seemed to be having just a little difficulty keeping the pace. "You alright?" I asked softly.

"I'll be fine," she insisted. "Was never that much for running, even back in gym class, but I think," puff, "I can keep from holding everybody else up. Know that's the last thing you need."

"Okay," I agreed, staying abreast of her, and smiling a little. We crossed an intersection together, moving into the final stretch.

Suddenly there was a faint voice in my mind: Willow was using a simple telepathy spell, to avoid having to waste breath that she needed for jogging to talk with it. Why are you staying back here?

As a vampire, I didn't have anything better to do with my breath than talk, no matter how hard I was running. "Well, umm, didn't want to leave you bringing up the rear alone. In case of a suprise attack from behind us... I know that you're quite capable of defending yourself, but you can save your mojo for something else if I fight off the demons the old fashioned way.

Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. She smiled at me, and sudenly a hail from a little further on caught my attention. The rest of our team was holding position about ninety feet away from the hotel entrance, and Willow and I caught up to them in a mere moment. The gates were guarded by seven warrior demons, each of them maybe nineteen feet tall and carrying weapons that pulsed with pure black energy.

I looked around. "Okay, we ready for this?" Spike and Faith nodded.

"No time like the present," Buffy muttered, fidgeting her right hand as if her fingers were itching.

"Then..." I started, and was interrupted. It happened too fast for me to process, just a sweep of darkness passing through the circle we had made, and leaving holes after it left. I saw Spike shaking his head, trying to reorient, and that damn dragon was flying away, gaining elevation, and holding what might be human-sized figures in each of its front claws. Willow and Illyria were nowhere to be seen, unless you counted those vague shapes.

"Oh, come _on_!" Faith breathed. We watched for any immediate indication that the dragon had snatched up more than it could easily hold... surely at least _one_ of them would be able to quickly break free? Unless they were quite badly wounded...

"Damn it to hell," Spike growled. "Now we've gotta go fight the dragon to get them back. They're the keys to our whole plan, after all!"


	5. Chapter 5

We all just stood there and stared for a moment. "This... this wasn't just some random snatch," Faith said slowly. "Stinks of a planned abduction by the bad guys. As, well, as undoubtedly kick-ass as each of the four of us are in a regular scrap-out, none of us exactly have the kind of extra-super powers that would come in handy chasing after a dragon with just about no time left."

"I agree," I said slowly. "And that's probably why neither Willow nor Illyria were able to break free right away. Maybe they were targeted with some kind of extra magic, and the dragon was just sent to make sure that we wouldn't be able to help either of them right away." I growled deep in my throat. "They took Illyria because they suspected she was important to whatever we were going to the hotel for, and Willow to keep her from using magic to save her quickly. Or something like that."

"Or maybe they thought Willow was the key one; it doesn't really matter," Buffy pointed out. "The thing is, now we need to figure out a... hey!" Fred had just appeared with us.

"Oh, hi, glad I found you. It's still not easy to track anybody this close to the dimensional instability," she said in greeting. "Ummm..."

"Did you see what happened?" I asked immediately.

"Not exactly, but close enough," she said. "Cordy is doing her best to follow the dragon - I was with her for a bit there. Willow is unconscious and looks hurt, but not critical. Illyria is encased in some sort of stasis bubble. Cordelia's gonna find out what it does with them and report back. Wesley's popped back to the wizard's school to confer with Virginia... we thought you might need a bit of extra help with this one... no offence."

"None taken, luv," Spike muttered. "So, we just wait here and see what they have to say?"

"Maybe fall back a bit," Buffy suggested, pointing the demons still guarding the Hyperion gate, who seemed to be noticing something in our direction.

"Yeah, they'll be able to orient on me..." Fred mentioned, "just don't move quickly, because I can't 'scroll' very fast right here. Oh, hey Doyle, what's the word?"

"Things getting more dire," Doyle reported unhappily. "The horde is causing more and more damage, all across the city. Death count's gotta be, well, there's no way to be sure exactly." He shook his head, frowning. "I know you don't like to hear this, boss, but..."

"No, it's okay." I assured him. "Doesn't help to sugarcoat the ugly truth... Oh, dammit! Like we didn't have enough bad news!"

Several of the others were surprised at this exclamation from me, until they realized that Lilah had just appeared a few feet away. "What the hell do you want?"

Lilah smirked her usual 'in charge and loving it' smile. "Just wanted to let you know that my offer is still on the table, for about five more minutes. You agree to help us find the sword of Bosh Ma-ahd, and all of this goes away. We'll let your friends go and everything. It's a good offer, Angel cakes." She grinned and laughed softly after delivering the faux endearment.

I gritted my teeth. "I think I should probably 'let you know' that right this second would be a good time to blip out... and stay well away from us!"

She laughed out loud. "Or what? You can't hurt a dead woman, Angel, I mean literally in this case. It's fun hanging close to you, and this way I get to eavesdrop on whatever you're planning. Got a way to stop me?"

"Um, I think I do," a new voice announced. Cordelia strode towards Lilah, her right hand held out in front of her, and glowing with a fierce white radiance, like she had glowed several years ago when she was still alive. Lilah flinched at the light and tried to back away, but she couldn't move as quickly as Cordelia could advance on her, and just before my girl, (metaphorical possessive there,) was close enough to touch her Lilah blinked out.

"Um, thanks," Spike pointed out. "Not sure you needed to go to such extremes just to take brow-boy here at his word..."

"No, Angel was right," Cordelia said, the glow fading almost instantly. "We need to be able to plan without getting overheard. Okay, the dragon seems to have a lair not too far from here, and it's dropped Willow and Illyria there. In what used to be the upper floors of a ruined apartment tower. The bad news is, superstructure has collapsed enough that the stairways are completely blocked and of course the elevator is ruined. You could try climbing up what's left of the outside of the building..."

"But then we'd be exposed, and at a disadvantage if Draco boy tries to attack us from the air."

"Yeah," Cordelia nodded somberly. "I'm hoping that Wesley's idea is paying off, because things look more than a little dire otherwise... ohh, speak of the Rogue demon Hunter..." Exactly how she knew that he was coming several seconds before Wesley popped in I'm not sure, but, well, pop in he did. "What's the word?"

"I think I have an option," he said gruffly. "It's a good thing that Virginia had the items available, and that she was willing to put them to use on our behalf."

"What items?" Spike demanded suspiciously. "I told you, Percy, I'm not wearing no enchanted gizmos; no necklaces or bracelets or any of that..."

"Oh, do shut up Spike," Wesley snapped. "It was funny before, but that chorus is now quite past the point. If bearing a magical talisman is the only way to survive and complete the mission, then you _will_ put it on. Come on, we need to get to the portal quickly."

"Portal?" Buffy asked, as Wesley led the way, not by walking or drifting slowly, but jumping with a pop about forty feet away and waving for those of us on foot to catch up.

"It would take a bit to explain that," I muttered lamely, as we sprinted off, mostly away from the hotel, but that was probably for the best at the moment. It wasn't long before we arrived at another blank wooden portal, this one mystically dead in a way that I could somehow tell.

"Count off the four corners, and then mark these runes upon it," Wesley told me, making the magical letters appear glowing in midair near his hand. I recognized the first step from the more detailed instructions that Virginia had given me earlier, but wasn't quite sure about the glyphs until after I had finished writing them with a scrap of chalk onto the door... then I guessed that they might be part of an incantation to activate the portal for receiving, instead of sending us somewhere else.

Sure enough, after only seconds, a small pile of long thin objects appeared with a soft _bang_, and the glyphs disappeared from the doorframe slowly after. Some of the deliveries were fairly typical looking weapons, but... I picked one of the other items up... it looked like a long thin strip of leather, embellished with ward carvings, tiny jewel studs, and gold plating. "Umm, what the heck do we..." I turned and stared at Wesley. "You've gotta be kidding me."

"Not really," he said, shaking his head. "Belts of Ammana-lohr. I realize that you may feel slightly foolish putting them on, but they will endow each of the four of you with flight, the ability to shoot power bolts, and other abilities that will serve you quite in good stead against the fire-wyrm. The weaponry is all enchanted, blessed, or composed of mystical metal... the better for attacking a dragon with."

"Umm," Fred cleared her throat softly while the four of us started looking at the belts, and the enchanted weapons. "I've heard of these belts before, Wesley, and they're a channel for metaphysical power, not a source or battery for it. We don't have any reservoir for them to draw on; it would require..." she trailed off. "Ohh, are you thinking of..."

"Yes, I was just getting to that point," Wesley mumbled a little sheepishly. "As bona fide spirits from the great beyond, each of the four of us intrinsically represent mystical forces, and our resonance with the ether can be used to sustain the, um, the artifacts. We will, however, need to temporarily bond, each of us four ghosts with one of you, for the time that you're using the belts. It might be an unusual experience, er, for all of us, but there seems to be little other ch-" Now incredibly embarrassed, Wesley changed the subject by seizing on a triviality. "And the four Lohr belts are not interchangeable; this one, for instance," he indicated the belt that Spike was holding, "is Calyx, embodying the iconic force of water, and would better be worn by one of the, um, the Slayers. Probably Buffy."

I decided to try cutting through the confusion. "Maybe you should direct us all on who should wear which belt... and you're doing this, Spike - no argument." Turned back to Wesley. "Each of us have to pick one of you ghosts to team up with?" He nodded. "Um, Doyle, how about it man?" I knew that Doyle would be very uncomfortable 'joining' with any of the others... he didn't know Buffy or Faith at all really, and the one time he'd met Spike while alive Spike had tried to kill him... not that that put Doyle into a very exclusive group or anything...

"Be happy to," Doyle said.

"Actually, I'm over my objection," Spike muttered softly, at almost the same time. "Always kinda wanted to be able to fly on my own, or nearly... This one?" Wesley nodded at him. "Alright." Spike buckled one of the belts around his waist.

"Umm... how about you and me, Cordy?" Buffy said a little tentatively, and I knew it was a little like falling on a grenade for her. She and Cordelia had never gotten along really well, but she had to know that Faith disliked Cordelia and Cordelia disliked Spike. Cordy nodded, a little uncertain herself.

"So what, I'm stuck with tutor girl?" Faith asked, although I saw a bit of a glint in her eye... she and Fred had gotten along pretty well when Faith had been working to stop the Beast and my evil other half.

"The hell you are," Spike put in, and I laughed... Fred had always been **his** favorite. "It doesn't have to be boys with boys and girls with girls, does it?"

"Um, no I don't think so," Wesley said, a little surprised by the notion. "Might be slightly odd for us, since we'll be aware of your bodies in the same way you are. Don't think it'll work the same way, since we ghosts don't exactly have bodies anymore." He shrugged and looked at Faith. "One more joint venture?"

"Yeah, might as well," Faith said, shaking her head. "You kinda owe me one, after all."

The four of us had all put the belts on by this point. "Okay, now how does it work?" I asked nervously.

"Kind of like this," Doyle said, and all of a sudden I was aware of several things, of Doyle's irish laugh in the back of my mind, and the belt around my waist pulsing with metaphysical power. It only took the briefest effort to think of it - and I shot up into the sky, hovering about twelve feet above the others.

"Come on, we don't have any time to lose!" I called. The rest of the ghosts blinked out (or was that blinked **in**?) one at a time, and soon the belt squad was airborne. They had all re-armed themselves from Wesey's gear as well, Buffy carrying a long spear, Spike a heavy war axe, and Faith had a two-handed broadsword scabbarded on her back, along with possibly smaller items that any of them might have hidden. I hadn't taken any new weaponry myself... the mithril sword would do just fine for dragon fighting, and I was quite used to it by now.

"I'll lead the way," Buffy called, suiting flight to word, except that her words sounded halfway more like Cordelia's than Buffy's own.

As we flew along, there was a crack that sounded like lightning, and a soft rumble as part of an already levelled building collapsed into further rubble. I looked around, confused, and saw Faith looking with annoyance at Spike. "What?" he replied with the usual insouciance. "Had to try out this power bolt thing beforehand to see how it worked. What's the other power or powers we get, Percy?"

Faith shook her head in a gesture of annoyance that did seem very characteristic of Wesley, though it was harder to recognize with her. "Only one extra ability, and it's different for each of you, er us, based on the belts. Buffy has curative talent, which means that she should go and make sure that Willow is all right as soon as an opportunity presents itself. Angel, as the bearer of the earth Lohr, has the bond breaker at his disposal, which hopefully will be able to free Illyria from confinement, as well as possibly get the rest of us out of any tight spots we might blunder into during melee with the dragon."

"And?"

"We have the fire Lohr, providing a flame shield which should be a quite useful defense against a dragon's most notorious attack mode."

There was a pause there, during which Spike seemed to be trying to work it out for himself. "Okay, Water, earth, fire... wind! Okay, I've got wind Lohr right? What does that give me, then?"

Faith cleared her voice. "Umm, neither Virginia nor 'my' research was able to determine the specific ability for the wind Lohr. But I imagine that the two of you will be able to figure it out in short order. Just be careful not to hurt any of the rest of us while you're experimenting!"

Spike considered that. "Will do. Oh, and Faith, don't get too attached to ol' Wes. Illyria still needs his help, remember." He smirked a little as if that was a witty comeback.

Buffy turned back to roll her eyes at both of them, slowly coasting to a stop. "Okay, you guys. Once we round this corner, we'll be in sight of the dragon's lair, and probably the dragon. Anybody got a suggestion as far as strategy goes?"

"Well, starting with the simplest possible," Spike said slowly, "how about a direct assault? Keep at it, with any form of attack that seems to be hurting it, including our hand weapons and energy bolts, until someone can score a killing blow?"

"That sounds a little risky, even with our power-ups," I decided. "Wouldn't hurt to have Illyria's raw strength on our side... and she can probably jump far enough to stay in combat even with a flying dragon. I think I should try to get past the dragon, into the lair, as soon as possible, and use this 'bond breaker' to set Illyria free."

"Okay," Faith nodded. "Spike and I will cover you as best we can. Buffy, what about you?"

Buffy paused a moment, then let a fierce grin come onto her face as she hovered. "Yeah, if you're going in Angel, then I'll back you up. Make sure that Willow's okay, though I don't think I want her helping us out with this unless we have no other choice - she has to conserve her power."

"Alright," Spike said, and we arranged ourselves silently into a new formation... Faith in the lead, and Spike flanking her closely on the left. I flew a little further behind Faith, and to the right, and Buffy brought up the rear. We passed around the edge of the building and saw the ruined apartment tower that Cordelia had mentioned, and the large dragon, flying near the top of it, apparently waiting for us. Though I'm not sure it was quite expecting us to be flying... if a dragon can show an expression of surprise, then this one very nearly did a double take.

"Let's try a simultaneous blast," Spike suggested, and after a moment of non-verbal consensus, I lifted up my hand and focused the energy from the belt. Four streaks of slightly different colored energy rocketed into the head and neck of the huge reptile... and though the thing snarled in frustration, it didn't seem to be too badly hurt. I had been afraid of that. Dragons are really tough, resistant to most forms of attack. These 'energy bolts'... they might be useful in finishing the fight, but to get that far we'd need to soften it up a lot with other forms of attack.

"Okay, let me try this," I said, and drifted toward the dragon, then broke into a headlong dive, blade first, There was what looked like a small weak point in the scales, a mere crack, in one of the beast's foreclaws, where the roots of two talons met. I slashed at it, and the silvery blade dug in deep. "Alright, now careful..." Twist the blade, slash sideways and out... and the sword came free, pulling a chunk of dragon scale as big as a shield out by its roots. The dragon howled in pain, and I flew back as quickly as I could... it bashed at me with the wounded claw, and hit me, but the impact was light because it didn't have any leverage and I was already moving back away from the attack, rolling with the punch - or maybe flying with the bash. The dragon seemed to think about that, and tried to grab me between both claws, but I was long gone. Still, the fact that it learned so quickly was disquieting - we wouldn't be able to fool it with that factic again.

And then the dragon screamed again, much louder. I spun full around to see what was happening, and saw Spike hovering beneath the dragon's underbelly, dodging a spray of hot steaming blood and looking for another place to strike. While I had been distracting the best with a relatively small strike, Billy Idol had been going for the high stakes. It figured... and probably he had the right idea. The dragon was trying to dive down on Spike and bite him or catch him between its forelegs, but Faith made a big show of trying to get into attack position at the side of the wyrm, just behind the 'shoulder' where its foreleg connected up - another notorious weak spot - and with that distraction, Spike was able to zip off and Faith backed away too. Dragon now seemed to be quite incredibly pissed off and wore an expression like 'Just what the unholy hell do you flying knights think you're accomplishing?"

I shared a mischievous glance with the others, and we started to move as if by unspoken agreement. The sensation was quietly exhilarating... I had fought co-operatively with each of these people one at a time, (as well as fighting _against_ each of them at one time or another,) but never with even two of them together as a team before this mission, and certainly never while airborne. Did the fact that we were all wearing the Lohr belts help with the teamwork factor... or was it the fact that we were all possessed by ghosts at the moment? In any event, Buffy and I drifted towards the mouth of the dragon's lair, close enough to back each other up but not to be attacked together, neither taking our attention off of the dragon itself. Faith and Spike flew in the other direction, ready to attack at the dragon's tender spots if it should focus on either of us.

Suddenly the dragon launched itself into action, coming straight for me, smoke curling from the tips of its nose and mouth. Doyle's presence in the back of my mind whispered calm, and I felt myself rise ever so slowly into the air. The dragon snarled viciously, stretching out a claw, apparently so that it could swipe at Buffy en passant, and two seconds after what I would have thought was the last possible moment of evasive action, Doyle switched off the flight spell. I dropped through the sky kinda like a big panicky stone, but the tactic definitely got me out of the path of the flames the dragon snorted, and beyond range of any bite attack. After falling about forty feet, Doyle let me turn the flying engine back on, and several seconds later we stabilized far below the action.

I had a pretty good view from down there actually, as the dragon, surprised by my sudden plummet, tried to slash at Buffy, catching her on the arm a bit but getting a good poke in the claw for its trouble. Spike got lashed by its tail as he tried to sneak up behind the beast, but it didn't seem terribly bad, and Faith got a good slash in at one of the rear legs.

**Thanks, man,** I said to Doyle internally. **Nice tactic.**

**Happy to help any way I can,** he assured me. **Mystical vibes, dragon evasion tactics - I've got it all.**

I laughed at that. **It's weird to think of you being inside me like this. What's it like for you?**

**A little bit as if I were alive again... and the hero of the story. Which means we'd better get back to the good fight huh?**

Buffy met me on my way back up, and we surveyed the situation. The dragon had passed the lair entrance on that strafing run, but it was turning around for another try. "Whatcha think?" she asked softly.

"Not bad, but not too good," I decided. "Nobody tries to sneak up on it from behind without figuring out a way to avoid that tail."

"Yeah," Buffy agreed, turning around in midair to survey the dragon in mid-motion. "Helluva wicked range of motion it's got with that thing." I nodded soberly.

"Okay," Spike muttered as he flew up to meet us, shaking out his slightly battered limbs. "I've been thinking about this." For the first time, I could hear Fred's speech pattern coming from him. "I know you want to go and make sure that Willow is okay as soon as possible, Buffy, but I'm not sure that's a good idea right now. There's a whole lot of difference between the two of us working together to fend off the dragon and keep it from going back into its lair, and **three** of us. And there's plenty of reason for Angel to be the first one to go in... Illyria's help here could mean a world of difference, much as I hate to admit it." That last sentence sounded like Spike speaking for himself, not Fred.

"Yeah, I see your point," Buffy agreed reluctantly. "Wills should be okay for a little while longer, but if I leave you two out here with the dragon alone, one of _you_ might get hurt."

"And that's another point," Faith put in. "If we do get tagged and you're here, you can use the healing mojo on us, or on yourself, right? As long as Cordy isn't about to run out of metaphysical juice."

"I'm not sure I want to try going in myself just yet anyway," I mentioned. "Let's see if we can do some damage with all four of us working together."

"Okay," Spike said, nodding. "Well, it's finished turning around. Any ideas for a good tactic?"

I thought furiously. "It's not used to this any more than we are... it may have fought people on the ground, but never flying through the air."

"Hmm... maybe other dragons," Faith put in.

"Still not really the same thing. Uhh... Faith, are you okay with being the decoy out front? You've got the heat shield, but it's still dangerous... it'll probably try to bite you or catch you in its claws when it realizes that toasting you doesn't work."

"Let it try," Faith insisted, hefting her sword meaningfully.

"Okay... Spike, you go from below again, Buffy from above, and I'll try to approach by the side. And... and I guess we'll see what it does!"

We split up into formation. And quickly it became clear why sometimes time spent coming up with intricate plans is wasted - the dragon simply refused to orient on Faith. For some reason, it was determined to make a strafing run on Buffy. She tried to fall back just a little and let Faith attract its attention without moving too far out of position, but it seemed to me that that just wasn't going to work. "Just go float behind Faith," I called to her. "You'll see enough action soon." With more than a little ill grace, Buffy zipped along to do that. The dragon just kept on going for her, hardly seeming to notice that someone else was in the way now.

It blasted out a big snort of blazing fire right on cue though... not sure if it was trying to roast Faith in passing, or aiming at Buffy behind her or what... but the fire and heat splashed away from Faith, and even the flames that were well to the side didn't pass her... that fire shield on her belt was big and tight, which was good to know. And the dragon was so surprised to see its fire bouncing that it didn't so much as flinch away as I came swooping in and slashed viciously at the thin scaled behind its front leg. It flinched good and hard afterward though.

I never saw the dragon's arm snap back and pin me, for a long moment, against the rough, scaly skin, further back from where I'd made my incision. When I came back to my senses, I was once again falling through the air, and had to concentrate hard to stabilize before slamming hard into a streetlamp. **This is getting to be a bad habit, man,** Doyle deadpanned inside my head.

On my way back, I suddenly realized that I had an opening to slink into the lair and try to use the bond breaker on Illyria. The dragon was still chasing Buffy, with Faith and Spike doing their best to harry and wound it as much as possible without being hurt badly themselves. And all of them were well away from the lair entrance.

As I made my way quietly towards the ruined building, I kept a close eye on the action, and blinked in surprise when I saw a tornado funnel materialize about the dragon's tail, pulling it from side to side and off its course. And then came Spike's voice yelling "Wind Lohr kicks _ass_! Whooo - tornado power!" And then the dragon's claw clenched around his legs, and Faith had to dash over and help him hack his way free.

Once into the mouth of the lair entrance, things quickly got dark and very strange looking... rooms and corridors of the apartment building had been smashed together and opened up at odd angles. Suddenly, as I rounded a twisting passageway, there was a soft blue light, outlining a largish cavern. The source of the light was a glowing ellipsoid bubble, about six feet long and a little over two feet in cross section, which had to be the stasis container that Cordelia had mentioned. The thing that I had to free Illyria from.

First, I looked for Willow, and found her crumpled into a heap nearby. She was badly hurt yes, but stable, and I breathed a sigh of relief at that. I wasn't about to move her yet, but Buffy would need a light source when she came in after her. That was something that none of us had thought of.

I turned back to the light, focusing on the confining bubble, and frowned. **Okay Doyle, any idea how to do this bond breaker thing?**

**Not really,** his voice replied. **Should be as simple as concentrating, like the flying and the power blast.**

I thought about that for a second, and then pointed at the bubble, visualizing the magic substance evaporating away and disappearing. Nothing. Well, maybe that wasn't quite the right concentration pattern... it was supposed to be a _breaker_, right? I tried again with a slightly more impressive imaginary fate for the stasis field, rupturing into many tiny pieces that flew a short way before fading out. Leaving the lair in deep darkness.

For a few seconds I just stood there, feeling stupid. I hadn't realized that the twisting passageway of the dragon's entrance absorbed quite so much of the light here. My eyes are very good, like those of most vampires, but really intense darkness can still blind us, and this qualified; or at least I was about as good as blind. There were a few patches of not-quite-as-black around, but I wasn't even sure what they meant.

"Angel? Angel, what is your condition? Where am I? What has happened to the others?" It was Illyria's voice, and that meant she could see well enough to recognize me, or distinguish my breathing or smell or something. Well, Illyria could do just about anything, so it kinda figured that..."

"You and Willow were attacked by hostile magic and carried off by the dragon," I told her. "Spike, Buffy and Faith are fighting the dragon now. I'm fine, just a little disoriented... your stasis bubble was the only light source in here and now it's gone. Can you see at all?"

"Yes, I am generating my own light source... iit must be a variety that your eyes do not detect." There was a short pause. "Is that any better?" An eerie violet radiance appeared for a second, outlining a feminine, muscular, armored figure, and then there was a bluish pop and it faded out. "I don't believe I can generate a light source for you. Extend your left arm and I shall lead you out."

I thought about that. The tunnel floor had been rough and would be hard going, if I tried to walk it blind except for Illyria's help - and we both needed to get out as soon as possible. "No, I think I have a better way." I floated up several feet in the air. "I have a good sense of spatial mapping, so if you just tell me which direction I need to fly in, I think we can make better time this way."

A pause. "Very well. Rotate two point three radians to the right, and bear up point four radians."

"Um, okay, but for future reference degrees would be better. And yards, if you have to give any distance measurements please."

She was able to give me directions without me crashing into any walls, and after we'd navigated a few twists my own night vision was back in service and I was able to tell her I didn't need the instructions any more.

We got back to the lair entrance at about the same time and looked out, trying to figure out as much as we could about the state of the fight. Apparently, somehow the dragon had been distracted from Buffy, because now it was Spike who was zipping along ahead of it. (There would be someone who had to lead the dragon in most of the possible battle formations we could come up with, I supposed, because the dragon's own instinct was to chase and destroy a single opponent with a head-on assault, and none of us were really strong enough to withstand such an attack.) He seemed pretty burned and battered... probably Buffy couldn't get to him and heal him without both of them getting flamed. Faith was trying to cut some tears in one of its wings, while Buffy was floating above it and trying to stab her spear into its back... probably aiming for a weak spot in the scales where the tail emerged.

"Try to lead it past here," Illyria called out to Spike. "If I try to jump such a great distance, the Wyrm may evade past my ability to correct in mid-trajectory."

Spike shot a look over his shoulder at both of us, hesitated a moment, and nodded. After describing a wide arc in mid-air, he came out of it at top airspeed and on a course that would take him right past us, the dragon right behind him. I stood silent, not wanting to do anything that might upset Illyria's plan, and watched as she leapt across the empty space and landed astride the dragon's neck, just behind the head.

I took to the air then, wanting to be nearby to provide support to Illyria's effort if I could, and called to Buffy, "I think the dragon has become the hunted, not the hunter. See if you get an opening to heal Spike, and then go get Willow."

Buffy blinked in surprise, and then nodded, seeing the value in the suggestions. "What's the lair like?"

I could have kicked myself, forgetting to mention it first thing. "_Dark_! You'll need a light source - I needed Illyria to help lead me out."

Buffy considered this for a moment, or maybe it was Cordelia. "Switch weapons?" She hefted the spear sideways, looking at my sword.

"Um, why?"

With a grin, she drifted close, snatching the sword away by its hilt and tossing me the spear in exchange. With a moment's effort, the blade started to shine with silver radiance. "Mithril always has luminous potential. I have enough leftover glow-power to trigger it, even while fueling the water Lohr."

Cordy - it figured. "Okay, good luck!"

"Hey!" Buffy called my attention to the action just in time to see the most important moments. Illyria had been riding the dragon's neck just behind its head, waiting for the beast to get tired of trying to buck and toss her away, and now she brought her hands up, fingers linked into a double fist, and brought them crashing down on the back of the dragon's head.

It had to be a horrible blow... the one that the rest of us hadn't been able to drive home with all of our magic weapons and energy bolts and special powers. The dragon screamed, in pure agony, and spasmed in mid-flight, desperate now to shake Illyria loose. As far as I could see, the demon didn't care - she had done what she came to do, and casually hopped off, to land on a rooftop more than forty feet below like she was jumping off of a bus. Feeling the need to do something to justify my presence, I shot off an energy bolt with as much power as I could muster, aiming for the place where the dragon's skull was probably already cracked. The additional howl of pain was pretty satisfying.

Faith flew down to join me, as Buffy tended to Spike's injuries. "I think it's mortal, now," she said hoarsely. It took me a second to realize that she was talking about the dragon's injuries: mortally wounded. "But if it lands in a frenzy like that, could do a lot more damage before it finally croaks."

"Hmmm." I had to think about that. "Yeah, you're probably right."

"Someone needs to go and put it out of it's misery," Spike said, taking a deep breath. "Angel?"

"You offering?" I looked over, and he shook his head at me. Past him, I could see Buffy heading for the lair entrance, my sword tucked into her waistband.

"It's your job, el Capitano. You called it, back when we first saw the dragon down in the alley. Well, now you've got your chance."

I looked at Faith, but she shrugged slightly. "He's right... well, not about the stuff in the alley maybe, because I wasn't there for that and don't know," she said. "But I think this is something you have to do."

I looked down at the dragon, flying lower, thinking about perching on a building well away from Illyria. Now that the tide of battle had apparently turned, my enthusiasm about killing a dragon had turned into reluctance. As evil and deadly as the creature might be, it was rare and beautiful, and dragons were pretty much an endangered species throughout the cosmos. How could I destroy one? And why did it have to be me?

But there wasn't really time to argue. "Alright," I muttered, hefting Buffy's spear. Now it looked like a good thing for me that she had suggested this switch... her weapon was more suitable for delivering a death blow than the sword would have been.

I flew down through the gray sky, orienting on the dragon, which heard me coming and turned around to face me, determined to at least go out fighting as hard as it could. I respected that. On the other hand, things would be easier if I could capitalize on the fracture that Illyria had already dealt it, which meant that I had to come at the thing's head the other way. A short series of energy bolts stunned it long enough for me to land standing up at the very far edge of the neck - for about a fifth of a second. It **really** didn't like me standing there, which I could understand considering that Illyria had been in pretty much the same position when she struck.

I almost fell off... I think I had to use a little 'flight' power to keep my balance actually, and even so ended up sprawled with my arms and legs and chest landing on the rough scales, and getting scratched painfully here and there. Lost my grip on the spear, and it really _should_ have fallen down, but it kinda bounced and I was just able to grab it with one hand.

The dragon tried a few more unpredictable maneuvers in the hope of jostling me loose, then apparently ran out of pep for such energetic tactics. I got laboriously up to my knees and one hand, then crawled a little further up as careful as I could, wincing at the fresh cuts that the hard scales were opening. Readied the spear... and felt, very oddly, that I had to say something. "Sorry, bud... not sure if you knew that you were working for the bad guys... maybe you liked it. But I gotta do this." And I plunged the shaft of the spear against the wound on the back of the dragon's head.

It went in, a long way, and I pulled it out a little bit, shifted it to the side and pushed in again. From the dragon's throat came a strangled kind of gasp, and then its body stiffened and stopped moving. That was it.

I wrenched the spear back out, or most of it. A remarkably large chunk of the point had broken off and presumably was still embedded within the dragon's brain - no time to get it back out now, and it'd be an incredibly messy task anyway. I took the shaft anyway, not sure why, and leapt for the open air, meeting up with the rest of the gang as they got organized, more or less. Illyria was standing on a rooftop nearby, and Spike was just taking off with Willow riding piggy-back style on his shoulders... he probably wouldn't be able to go at top speed like that, but it seemed like a better way than any other to get her back to the hotel, as long as our dear departed friends could keep the Lohr belts working.

"We've lost time," Willow mentioned, a worried tone in her voice, and not just because she was perched on top of a flying vampire. "If Wolfram and Hart arranged this diversion, they've probably also been scrambling to get every possible demon and vampire back to the Hyperion, ready to stop us if they can.

"I'm not sure, I don't hear much of an increase in the background noise," Illyria put in, running underneath us. "There is something planned, but I'm not sure how much of the horde it involves."

"Which means it might be something even worse," Faith muttered. "Damn, I didn't quite think that was possible."

"Well, we've come this far," I said. "And I assume that you girls are determined to stay in this no matter what? Spike and I knew that our lives were probably forfeit when we declared war on the circle, but the three of you - you have the other Slayers to think about, and the new Watchers network to build. Maybe you should just..."

"No," Buffy said, quietly but with that unutterable conviction in it. "Your team may have made their choices earlier, but I've made mine by now. Wiping out the circle of the Black Thorn was a worthy goal, win or lose. So is trying to save you guys - save the whole city, from this army. And we have a chance to redouble on your victory now, to beat back the rising dark so far it won't know what hit it - thanks to Illyria. Live or die, I'm in."

"Me too," Faith chimed in almost instantly.

"What the hell?" Willow laughed nervously. "'Once more into the breach.'"

"'We few, we happy few,'" Spike recited dryly. I felt like I was missing something... especially as his eyes moved slightly to watch Buffy sidelong. It looked like a single tear would fall from one of those eyes, until he blinked it away. Must have been a bit of dust that he had flown into.

Pretty quickly we were back at the Hyperion hotel, and I fired several blasts of energy at the guardian warrior demons as soon as they were within sight... just as Buffy and Faith did the same - I think all three of us had done it on a whim and none of us guessed that anybody else would do the same thing too. Spike couldn't easily raise his hand to fire with Willow still on his shoulders, but he narrowed his eyes and a tornado appeared, throwing the bodies of the demons around for good measure.

As soon as I touched down, there was a subtle blinking sensation and Doyle was no longer in the back of my mind - I looked around and saw that all of the ghosts had seperated now, which meant that the Lohr belts were useless. Well, we had gotten some good use out of them.

Illyria leapt down from a balcony and turned to me. "The talisman?" I extracted it from a pocket and handed it to her, and an intense red glow spread out from the pendant and homed in on Illyria's outline. She waved a hand, and there was a subtle shimmer in space, lagging a few centimeters behind her every motion. "Excellent."

"Tally-ho!" Spike called, leading the way to the hotel doors.

"Did you just call me what I think you called me?" Faith quipped.


	6. Chapter 6

I watched the fallen warrior demons carefully while climbing awkwardly over the pile that their bodies made, ready to do a little quick stab work with the sword if any of them happened to move on their own, but none did. Something was feeling itchy in the base of my throat though. Somewhere near here would be the last and strongest line of defense, and considering what we had already been through, I had no idea what that would be or how we were supposed to fight it. Willow caught my eye and nodded slightly, then smiled a fierce little smile. Well, that was something we still had on our side at least, and the thought made me feel a little better.

I looked around, and realized that I couldn't see Wesley. Was about to ask Fred about him, and then I realized that he had probably popped in to visit with Illyria for a moment, to make sure that she knew what to do with the gateway.

"Oh, hey Angel - you'll need this back I think." It was Buffy's voice... as I looked up at her I realized that she had thrown the mithril sword back to me, and I caught it awkwardly, then looked at the spear I was still carrying and back at her. Buffy shook her head, so I threw the spear shaft and broken point away, and Buffy pulled out a stake from one of her pockets. I shook my head silently, and she broke out laughing.

Spike and Faith opened the door to the hotel lobby first, and then did a bit of a double take at what they saw inside. I went up and took a look myself... and then I knew how they felt. For a second, it looked like the place was empty, but that might have been my eyes paying tricks on me in the darkness, combined with the fact that it wasn't at all what I expected to see.

There were a fair number of horrible beings, fiends, and goons inside, as I had expected, but they weren't milling out on the lobby floor, or waiting in perfect formation for us. Instead, they were mostly staying somewhere out of the way. Brrzhac demons standing behind the registration desk. Cthugans waiting solemnly in the doorways and the corridors beyond. Klensis beasts visible through the glassless windows there in one corner of the room. Vampire ninjas - Kobyame clan it looked like - were waiting on the stairway, weapons drawn. Up on the balcony, phalangoid demons, Khee Shaks and Konsoos, and a few revenants were waiting in eerie silence and stillness. A couple of Vartite fiends and about a dozen zombies were sitting on the floor in corners of the room, as if there was no other place for them.

And then, there was the dimensional gateway, a shimmering disk of rainbow colors down the far side of the lobby, blocking off the garden door. A few humanoid priests seemed to be attending to its workings, and a picked squad of shock troops _were_ standing guard in formation immediately in front of it... Granok demons it looked like, (ouch!) Tribulation mercenaries, and Tantrice.

"Well, if you're gonna come in, come on in," a familiar voice called out. "I mean, you look like you're expecting a fight - want us to try giving you one?"

I stepped through the doorway. "Maybe that'd be best, Lilah. I imagine you can probably guess why we've come."

"To shut down the gateway, yeah, yeah." She was stepping out into the middle of the lobby floor now, as the rest of the team gathered in behind us. "So... looks like the odds are about, umm, two hundred and fifty to six. How're you feeling?"

"Ready for a little action!" Spike called out.

"Hi, William," Lilah replied. "Think your boss is as confident as you are?"

"He's _not_ my boss," Spike spat out automatically. "But yeah, he knows we can get this done."

"Methinks the boy doth protest too much," Lilah declared theatrically. "About not being your lackey that is, Angel. Well, okay, how do you wanna do this? Start it up slowly, or just come rushing at you as quickly as possible? Or we form a defensive formation and wait for you to come at it?"

"Ummm..." I thought about that, including wondering whether Lilah was playing some sort of a mind game with me here. But it didn't seem worth the bother to say anything other than my honest preference. "Yeah, a few of you at a time sounds good to me."

"You got it," Lilah replied, laughing, A half dozen of the demons broke off from their groups and approached us... Faith and Spike shrugged, and they, Illyria, and I attacked simultaneously, killing four of them. Five more started approaching to take their place.

We kept at it like that for a little while. Some of the demons that went up against us were not so easy to bump off, of course, the vampire ninjas and the cthugans for example, were tough fights, but still they came only a couple at a time, with the rest watching and waiting, which was really intensely creepy. Soon I realized that a few of the zombies and lesser monsters had approached, not to fight, but simply to helpfully drag away some of the bodies of our fallen enemies so that we didn't get surrounded by them.

We started to drift apart, to each have a little more room to fight in, since if the other guys were going to keep playing by the same rule they couldn't yet send in masses of enemies to surround each of us. A little bit after that happened, I realized that nobody was coming for me. Buffy, Faith, Spike, and Illyria were getting all of the action - I pulled a Klensis beast away from Faith and slapped it around for a bit before ripping off its fundament gland with my bare hands, which gave it about ten seconds in which to shudder and die. But the next demon I tried to engage actually backed away from me. "What the hell?"

"They're saving you. They've been told to."

I turned around and saw Lilah smirking at me. **Well fine, let her smirk all she wants, as long as she doesn't realize what we're really here for and shut down the gateway.** "Saving me? Why, I didn't realize that you cared so much."

Lilah shook her head. "No, I don't think you understand. Not saving you as in 'saving yout life.' Saving you as in 'letting you be until the V.I.D. who wants to kick your ass himself shows up."

Okay, I have to admit that idea was starting to frighten me. "V.I.D... that mean Very Important Demon?"

"Pretty much... though I don't want you to think I'm making light." She let out a long and slightly melodramatic sigh. "We had to clear most of the vampires, lesser demons, and assorted monsters _out_ of the entire hotel - can you believe that? Only those who were considered worthy of seeing _him_ remain." She made a soft little 'sheesh'ing sound.

Power-freaked now, I was starting to get an idea what she was talking about. "Any idea when you expect him to drop by?" I checked the situation. Nobody seemed to be too heavily pressed. Willow was just hanging around near Buffy, not doing much of anything, probably conserving her strength, and no-one bothered her. Faith, Buffy, and Spike were each being kept busy, separately, by capable opponents, but not really endangered. It was as if they were humoring us - we'd obviously barged in here looking for a fight, so Wolfram & Hart was happy to supply us with one.

Illyria was being pressed a little more emphatically, with about four hulking yellow toad demons surrounding her and fighting as well as they could, but I got the sense that Illyria was stalling. She'd wait to make her move until the moment that it was least expected... which presumably would be after this Mister Big arrived. "Oh, any moment now," Lilah answered my question, shaking me out of idle thoughts.

"Really?" I looked towards the pulsing violet circle of light... it was practically expected at that moment. If I hadn't, Lilah would have wondered what was up.

On the other hand, if I hadn't, she probably wouldn't have chuckled. "No, no Angelino. You're going to miss it if you keep staring at _that_ thing. Bascellicoze knows how to make an entrance." She laughed. "As in, his **own** entrance."

And then I saw it... a moment too late. In the empty space near the passageway that used to lead to my office, red lightning was starting to spark out of nowhere. "_Illyria_!" I shouted, and she knocked the toad demons away from herself and came running, but it was too late. In mere seconds, a new figure stood there, dominating the entire scene.

Even though the shape it wore here on earth was probably a pale imitation of the malevolent splendor it was used to, I had to admit that the new arrival made an impressive sight. About fifteen feet tall, roughly hominid in outline but with soft, sleek tufts of gray fur all over its body, a mouthful of shiny teeth including four prominent points, perked triangular ears, and a long snout-like nose that tended to dominate its face. I stepped forward grimly.

"Should have realized that Ram or Hart wouldn't have been the ones to come. Wolf is the nastiest, the hunter and killer." A short breath. "And I've been wanting to meet one of you for a while now."

"Basil Lykos," Fred's ghost whispered, looking at the huge towering shape and altering the stresses with which Lilah had said the name. "King of the wolves... and one of the firm's senor partners?"

"Well, now I am here," Lykos said, sneering his wolf's mouth a little. "After the lackeys here on earth screwed up one thing after another, I decided that finally I'd have to deal with the little snot of a 'ensouled vampire' myself. Shall we get to it?"

Buffy staked the ancient vampire who had been occupying her, until Lykos' arrival, and rushed towards me. "You wanna fight us?"

"No, actually, that doesn't appeal at the moment, my darling," he snorted, and then quickly began to speak in another language, a tongue that I had never heard before and yet somehow, possibly because of the magical properties of the conjuration he was speaking, I understood it perfectly. "Here and now do I call on thee: Angel, Liam, Angelus - three persons bound to one body, and challenge thee to defend thy cause on the field of honor. Thou and I, tooth against blade, hand to claw, for the fate of this earth and the resolution of prophecy. To this challenge I constrain and bind thee, by the word that shall not be spoken until all worlds come, finally, to their utter end." (There were no literal 'thee's and 'thou's I admit - it was a mystic language, but they seem to fit the tone of his meaning.)

I sucked in a breath. The binding spell that this wolf-king senior partner had laid on me was real enough... it probably wouldn't kill me to break it but it would take its toll one way or another, and probably in some fashion that would cripple me in the battle to come. Besides, I kind of liked the idea of settling my grudge against the Senior Partners by dueling one of them to the death. (Death was a little different for demons of such incalculable power I knew, but in a mystically mediated duel to the death, killing king Lykos would be a huge blow to Wolfram and Hart throughout the dimensions, even if it wasn't quite permanent.)

And I knew something else. Demons like the senior partners might be strong, but they weren't omnipotent. The Senior Partners would never have worked through lackeys on Earth, no matter how busy they might be on other worlds, if they weren't a little afraid of stepping into a dimension beyond their full control and getting killed there. I made up my mind and was about to take a step forward towards Lykos, when I heard Spike object. "Why are you challenging **him**? I'm the _real_ vessel of destiny here!" He sounded almost desperately sincere.

"Maybe some other day and in some other place, but _not_ here and now, William the Spike," Lykos told him with a harsh laugh, and Spike just sat there, his last hopes cruelly dashed. I actually felt sorry for him, knowing what it would feel like myself to stand by and watch if the senior partner had chosen him.

Just then, Faith cried out "Willow!"

I turned to see what was happening now. Willow had bent over slightly, gasping in sudden exertion, and I realized that she had drawn on the reserves from the Dover coven. She whispered a spell under her breath... and beside me, more or less in the direction I had been about to step, a globe of softly glowing white light popped into existence.

"You can't go through with this, Angel," Buffy called out, the worry throbbing in her voice.

"I have to," I said softly, stepped forward, and grabbed the white globe. As I had expected, it was a battle spell that Willow had prepared for me, knowing that this was the only thing that anyone could do to help me in this ritual combat. It wasn't considered to be illegal interference, I somehow knew, it was just preparing a tool and leaving it for me to find, before I had formally accepted the bond of battle. Lykos' wolf eyes narrowed as he saw the energy absorbed into me, but he didn't object or even exclaim in surprise.

"I accept your challenge," I said simply. "Let the battle be joined." And Willow's spell took action then, somehow warping space and mass so that I was nearly as tall as Lykos was, and with momentum to match, though my motions and agility seemed unaffected. That violated the laws of physics of course, but physics was temporarily out to lunch, here in this room that had been warped slightly out of reality by so many strange effects. Willow's spell was taking advantage of that, in the same way that the firm had when they set up the gateway here in the lobby.

Lykos was on me in an instant, the blunt part of his forearm (foreleg?) swinging towards my throat, his canine teeth bared. But I had expected something like this, and my reflexes seemed to be much sharper than usual... was that Willow's booster or just the fact that I knew this was the most important duel I had ever been in? I let my body flow back before his attack, melting away with a useful 'aikido' technique... never resist and never impede. In aikido it is the rudest thing possible to interfere with an enemy's motion... such as being in the space he wants his arm to move through. Once I was down on the floor, propped up by one elbow. I swept out a foot, trying to hook Lykos' legs and knock them out from under him, but he hopped over the attempt and backed away a little, smiling that he had taken my measure, and maybe looking forward to the next round of combat.

I flipped back up to my feet and eyed him warily for a moment, trying to figure out what he was about to do. It didn't seem like he was up to anything much - he was waiting for me to make my move. I thought about drawing the sword, but didn't... against a really good opponent using a weapon can make you more predictable and thus be counterproductive. Stepped forward towards the wolf demon, carefully, trying to see if he would leap to the attack once I was within a certain range. Nothing. He was just standing there, every fiber of his body tense and straining with energy, but held back.

Well, I had to try something that might surprise him. I broke into a run, noticing that Lykos was standing his ground, and bent down as if I was going into a cartwheel or handstand, but soon as my hand touched the ground, I swung around that point of leverage as best I could, so as to kick into the wolf demon's side horizontally with both feet. It worked, well, in that I was able to connect, but he trapped one of my feet in between his torso and forelimb. Not a great situation for me. I kicked at his upper arm with my other foot, and that gave me enough leverage to flip my upper body off of the floor with my hands, so that I was flying up into the air, knocking him back... and my foot was free. I scrambled away... and realized that Illyria was moving towards the dimensional portal.

I had to keep anyone from realizing what she was really up to, so it was a calculated risk to even mention the portal. "You're going down, wolf boy," I muttered. "And then, that gateway is coming down too."

"Even if that's true, then what?" He spat. "You and your little friends can't fight your way out of a city under siege. My army will kill you all and then they will go on to destroy Los Angeles." He laughed. "And that's if you by some freak chance were able to take me out, which you won't. I'll win, and that will give me and mine enough influence over your world to make it ours."

"You talk big, shaggy," I taunted. "But hey, I'm not even bruised yet!"

"Increase the gate power!" Lilah called to the acolytes standing near it. "Full crossover intensity. They're going to try something."

It was hard to keep from laughing - that was exactly what I'd hoped Lilah would do. Anything to keep them from closing the gate on their own, prematurely, before Illyria could do her little trick.

Lykos, meanwhile, growled deep in his wolf's throat again, and let the claws on his hands extend until they looked like short swords, and slashed out at me with some of them. Figuring that a good defense is made of mithril, I drew my sword to fend them away.

I could see now that I'd taken the wrong tack a moment earlier. I couldn't win this fight by pushing an attack against the Senior Partner while he was calm, cool, and collected... he'd see a weak spot in my defenses and destroy me utterly. But King Lykos wasn't calm, cool, and collected really - if he were, he'd never have come. He'd come because he was angry, and that anger just might let me destroy him.

And so I hoped that what was going to happen next would _really_ piss him off.

I concentrated for the next little bit on trying to perfect my defense as the wolf demon king launched ever more energetic attacks against me, knowing that it had to be frustrating them to see them fail. Spin kick with his toe talons glinting brightly... fall back and roll away. He grabbed an axe that someone had dropped (using discovered tools was within dueling rules, remember,) and tried to chop one of my arms off with it... I actually used a variant of the trick that Buffy had used on Angelus in the middle of that fight during the Acathla ritual, stopping the axe by catching the flat sides of the axe between my hands. He raked at me with arm claws and I blocked them with the edge of my sword.

And then it happened.

The demon broke off his attack to stare in disbelief at Illyria, calmly stepping into the middle of Wolfram and Hart's dimensional gateway, but not passing through. She must have simply pushed past the elite demons standing guard. Dimensional energy was flowing through her body, through Fred's old body, and beginning to change. I saw the patterns of light start to form circular and spiral patterns, as if they were getting surrounded by themselves. One of the tall cyclopes was starting to grow hazy, not in outline, but in the details of his face and body... as if I was seeing him, and only him, through smoke - not the desk that was past him, not the floor that was at his feet. And then it wasn't just the cyclops, it was _all_ of Wolfram and Hart's demons and monsters. Then the gateway and the monsters were all gone, just blinked out like someone had hit a button on a tv remote or a computer mouse to delete them.

It was me and Lykos, and the slayers and Spike and Willow, and the ghosts and Lilah. Illyria's body lay where the gateway had been - maybe alive, maybe dead, it was impossible to tell. Nobody else left in the lobby. Probably no-one else left within several city blocks, unless there were local survivors that the horde hadn't killed 'just because.'

The demon king roared. "_Omabbed_!" He kicked a hole in the floor in his rage. "That godsforsaken little demon bitch - I **knew** we should have found a way to kill her before this." He whirled to stare at Lilah. "This comes out of _your_ hide, Morgan. Sixty-six point six _million_ warriors transported to this puny little world on your say-so, and now they are lost. Well, a few probably got washed up somewhere, but it'll be worth more than they are to find and recover most of them. So I think that you will suffer in absolute agony one year for each and every one of them!"

Lykos reached out to point at Lilah, but before he had finished the gesture, Wesley had appeared out of nowhere (literally,) in between them. Lilah disappeared in a soft blaze of light, but Lykos roared with annoyance and Wesley smiled with quiet triumph.

"She's safe from you now, and free of her quote unquote perpetuity contract," Wesley informed him. "The ones that I'm working for now have seen to that. 'Infinite in mercy' is the usual phrase. Now, unless I have it very wrong, you have a mortal duel that you're supposed to be concentrating on." He nodded to me slightly, just past the massive bulk of Lykos' body.

The wolf turned around, and scowled at me. "The way you're grinning, you must actually think Illyria's little trick has accomplished something, vampire. Once you're defeated, the kind of devastation I'll rain down on everything you think of as 'good' in this world will make Lilah's army look like a couple of little boys with toy tanks! And your friends will be the next ones to die horribly!"

"Well, there's that," I conceded, then whipped the sword towards his shoulder. He reached out his own arm and blocked it fiercely, but I had been expecting that, relaxing the shoulder, and didn't get hurt. At the same time, I rolled into him, so that our bodies were close together, and practically whispered into his perked-up ear.

"On the other hand, we've been at this a little while already, and you haven't kicked my ass yet. So I'm starting to wonder if this is all 'call of the wild' bluster."

He roared, actually snapping at my nose with his teeth, but I was already rolling back away, sheathing the sword and shifting my weight slightly from foot to foot. The gloves were well and truly off now. I couldn't hope to keep up a perfect defense against the kind of attack that this demon, (who was in the top five of anybody I'd ever faced,) was about to open up against me. But maybe, just maybe, I would have an opening for a devastating counterattack.

Even staying alive in that fight was far from easy. Lykos was truly a formidable opponent... well versed in the use of his natural weapons of tooth and claw, and obviously grandmaster in about a dozen different forms of martial art, most of which were unknown anywhere on Earth. Despite Willow's spell altering my effective height and mass, he was still about half a head taller if he stood up straight, and his body blocks and power punches had about one third more impact in them than my own. I did what I could, and had my hopes when I managed to take him in a jujitsu throw that would have given a homonid of any size a badly sprained ankle... but the wolf man's joints worked differently, and he didn't seem to be affected.

It was during that moment of disappointment that I let my guard down, and Lykos viciously slashed with one forepaw, his claws raking deep into my throat.

It was a bad wound; I knew it, even as I tried to fend off his attempts to leverage the scratch into an even more crippling bite. Generally, a vampire's physiology shrugs off what would be fairly deep wounds to a human, but that wasn't happening this time. Whether the wolf demon's claws were magic, or my quick-healing powers had simply been tapped out by the rest of the battles that I had been in today I wasn't sure. My neck was bleeding badly, and I could feel my strength running out with the blood.

Lykos let me struggle away, enjoying every drop and splatter of blood that landed on the tile. Was this it? Was it the beginning of the end? And how ironic was it, after dating a werewolf girl, that I'd finally be killed by a huge wolf demon?

Something tugged at me with the thought of Nina... not that I cared for her and hoped she was safe in Mexico, though of course I did. And if what Lykos said was true, he'd win this fight and be able to bring the Apocalypse no matter what, then she wouldn't be safe. But it really wasn't that.

It was something important, something that could mean the difference between victory and defeat right now. In a second I had found it, or thought that maybe I had. It seemed much smaller of a chance now that I was thinking of it directly, but maybe that was the only chance I had left.

When I started dating Nina, remembering the fact that her werewolf self had nearly killed me as a puppet, I'd asked Wesley for some kind of simple protection against werewolves or wolves, and he had given me a silver disc amulet marked with an ancient rune, that would confuse and stun magical wolves.

Would it possibly work against a senior partner, a demon king of all wolves?

Lykos was drawing near to me now, his teeth bared for the final attack, and I was starting to feel my strength ebb away. I had to try it. All that I needed was for the wolfman to flinch slightly from the amulet, and I would have my opening.

I thrust my left hand beneath my shirt, and couldn't find the amulet. Lykos roared and leapt, bearing me down to the ground, his teeth snapping at my shoulder. I tried to fend him off and look for the amulet at the same time, but it didn't work, so reluctantly I focused on the search, feeling the agony bloom all along the right side of my body as those cruel fangs tore into my flesh, mauling their way down towards my heart.

And then, of course, I found it. The silver disc was in my fingers, and I brought it out, nearly shoving it into Lykos' face. He flinched slightly, and impulsively I flipped the silver chain over the demon's own neck. For just a second, he seemed to be confused.

And I grabbed at the mithril sword with what strength I could muster in my right arm and drove the blade straight through its heart.

King Lykos roared and its body was consumed with bright blueish-white flame, melting the sword almost instantly, and I scrambled back and beat at my own clothes where they had caught fire. For a second the wolf's eyes looked at mine, with incredible rage and hatred in them. And then they were gone.

He wasn't dead for good, somehow I could tell that. The most powerful of demonkind always insisted on playing fast and loose with life and death in ways that we lesser folk could not. But that didn't matter to me so much. I had won the duel, at least, and in so doing, had beat back the entire Wolfram & Hart firm on this world. Their offices across the globe would be shutting down, for many decades at least. Willow's spell shut off and instantly blinked me back to my regular size without changing anything else.

I struggled up to my feet, and almost got knocked down again by Buffy. "You did it!"

"Yeah, I think so," I muttered tersely. I didn't want to mention my deepest fear, that having saved the world and won out, I didn't think I would survive myself. My wounds were critical, and we had no more healing magic. But there was something else to check on first. "Illyria!"

She was alive, barely, but definitely at death's door as well. Her eyes looked up as all of us crowded close, but I think the only one that she saw was Wesley. "What do those words you said mean: 'infinite in mercy?'"

Wesley smiled tightly, ethereal tears streaming down his cheeks. "I don't think that I could explain it to you," he said softly. "But maybe, if you want, I can show you what they mean. Would you like that?"

A long pause, long enough that I was wondering if the demon would ever speak words again. Then, ever so softly. "I believe... that would be... acceptable."

Wesley shot a look over at the spirit of Fred, and she nodded, also smiling, also crying about as hard as she could at the same time. The four ghosts were all starting to glow softly, which I suddenly realized might mean their time to remain here was almost up. It had been the energy from the gateway that sustained them here on earth, someone had mentioned, and that was gone now. How long did we have?

Wesley reached out and laid an insubstantial hand on Illyria's face, and her eyes closed for the very last time. He shone brighter and brighter there, kneeling over her, and then winked out. Was he conveying the demon's spirit to meet with the Powers that Were? What a meeting that would be.

My knees buckled, and I only just managed to get myself sitting on one of the steps up to the garden door instead of sprawling out embarrassingly on the floor. "Well, if Lilah and Illyria qualify for going to heaven," I muttered, "then I hope that I can get in. All but my vampire side, at least... Angelus can finally go to hell I guess, and good riddance."

"No!" Buffy exclaimed, squatting close to me. "Angel, you're not going to... to die. You _can't_ die!"

"There's an awful lot of my blood on the floor that says different."

"You can't!" she insisted, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "Not after... after everything you've done, everything you've given up, everything you've risked, everything you've accomplished. Not after everything that I did to save your incredibly cute ass!"

"I'm not sure that all of that always makes a difference," I said, lifting up an arm with difficulty towards hers. "I always knew that many people might have to die to make a difference, that the good guys don't always make it to the end. And you've accomplished so much, by being here. You and the rest, without you guys we could never have vanquished the horde, or smacked Wolfram and Hart down _damn_ good, or... or saved Spike and Gunn." I took a deep, ragged breath. "And I think when I'm gone, you and Spike are gonna figure things out. You're cookies now, baby, and he's chocolate milk or something the hell like that. He's learned a lot, hanging out with me for a year... He's good enough for you, and that's about the highest compliment I could ever think of."

"You're delirious, Angel," she said, with some justification. "Just... just hang on, okay. We'll be able to heal your wounds somehow, just as long as you..."

"There isn't enough time for that," Cordelia said softly. Buffy looked up at her, and now the tears flowed like a miniature stream from each of her eyes.

"God, no! Buffy, honey, I didn't mean to put it like that. We can't heal Angel, but we can do something better. I won the privilege of being the one to do this, but I didn't expect the scene to be nearly like it is. "

"I... I don't understand," Buffy and I said in unison, and looked at each other, and laughed without much in the way of real mirth.

"That scroll that the circle of the black thorn made you sign, keeping you from getting the reward of your destiny," Fred said, a big grin on her face. "They took it through the dimensional gateway here, to a holding dimension for safe keeping."

I didn't understand what that meant. I was starting to lose my grip on the whole situation, but I heard Buffy say "But that... that means..."

"It doesn't exist any more," Cordelia said. "And I am now honored to be the vessel from which destiny flows, or something like that. Angel... Angel?"

Something changed, like I had taken a huge fall and landed very hard and joltingly. The first thing I noticed was the pulse pounding in my throat and my ears. The second thing was that my neck and my shoulder didn't seem to be hurt anymore. The third thing I noticed was that Buffy smelled really nice.

Wait a second... pulse pounding?

I got up, looked around myself. We were still in the Hyperion lobby, with Illyria's body lying still a little way, and the scorch marks where Lykos had been vanquished maybe fifteen feet beyond. But everything else seemed to be slightly different.

I was looking at the world through human eyes now. Living eyes.

I spun around to face Buffy, and she was sitting in an awkward half-kneel, looking up at me with utter shock. "You're... you're human?"

"Damn!" Spike swore, and the predictable-ness of that response made me laugh, and swing Buffy up in my arms, hugging her.

"I'm alive, and I'm human," I repeated out loud, just savoring the words. "I never thought it would happen for real, but it did."

"And the world is saved, or at least safer," Doyle added pointedly. "So that you don't really need to worry about retiring as a Champion for a little while, and just enjoy your reward. There are others to carry on."

"Like you," Fred told Spike. "You're a hero now, and a champion, but you haven't earned this like Angel did. Maybe one day... but you've got a lot of work to do before that day ever comes."

"And with that," Cordelia said a little sadly, "We really do have to go now." She took a deep breath and grinned at me. "Shanshu, baby! You did it!"

"Couldn't have done it without you - any of you," I said. "Make sure to pass that along to Wesley."

"He knows," Fred assured me. "But I'll tell him you said so."

The three remaining ghosts faded away, and Buffy grinned at me teasingly. "So, you've saved the world and now you're human. What do you want to do now? I understand there's a cute blonde werewolf girl waiting for you in Cabo san Lucas."

That bit hard at my suddenly human heart. But... "No, I can't go and see Nina now. With the news reports, she may think that I died here... but, well, in a way I did. To her, I was the mysterious handsome vampire CEO, and all of that is gone now." I brushed a bit of hair away from Buffy's forehead and looked deep into her beautiful eyes. "But I think that you always saw me as more than a vampire, maybe, because you fell for me before you knew that I was that. You always saw the man that I could be, that I have the chance to be. Am I right?"

She beamed for a second, and kissed me sweetly on the mouth. "Well the slayer and vampire thing had its odd lure, but yeah. I really do think you're right." She sighed. "On the other hand, I'm not so sure I'm cookies yet, Angel."

I blushed in mortification, remembering the things that I had babbled to her when I thought I was dying. "Well then, what do you want to do?"

She smiled. "I want you to come and see Rome with me. I'm not sure if that'll lead to anything, but I want to spend time with you that has nothing to do with fighting evil monsters. I want to show you my world, the world of the sunlight and the flowers and the white puffy clouds. Come to Rome, Angel. If anything else needs to be figured out, we'll think about it there."

"I'll come," I assured her, starting to feel tears flowing myself. She reached up on tiptoes, pushing me down gently, and kissed my eyes dry.

"Umm... any idea how we get there?"

Buffy led the way out of the hotel. "Umm... well, we're probably walking a ways, until we get somewhere that the horde didn't ravage so much and we can catch a taxi. The charter jet is waiting at an airfield well outside the city... they dropped us at the Wolfram and Hart offices on parachute and continued on."

"Oh, joy." We led the way down the ruined street, hand in hand, Willow following a little way behind. I was starting to wonder if sometime I could drop by Connor. I had been plucked out of my old existence and handed a new one in very much the same way it had been done to him. Maybe we could start to get to know each other again. But Buffy came first.

"Say, Spike, have you ever wanted to go to Cleveland?" Faith asked, as they brought up the rear. "Wolfram and Hart didn't have anything to do with the Hellmouth two, so you can probably build up some good champion cred around there."

"Oh, wait a second," Buffy realized. "We have to go back to the retreat, and check on all of our friends and such. Umm... do you remember where the portal that Wesley led us to was? Can we do an outgoing from there?"

"Yeah, I think so," I said, and kissed her - just because. "I think it was down this side street..."


	7. Epilog

"So, what do you think?" she asked, and I recognized the feel of Buffy's hair brushing against the back of my arm immediately. Everything felt more REAL now that I was... well, now that I was all the way alive. Maybe I was just imagining it, but...

I turned around, looking into Buffy's face, staring at those deep slate-green eyes for a moment. And then I draped one arm comfortably around her shoulders and turned back east, facing the rolling valleys and the oncoming dawn, one hand on the railing. "I think it looks like it's going to be the most beautiful morning I could ever imagine."

She smiled. "Good answer. But you can't smell the sun before you see it anymore, can you?" I shook my head, surprised by the memory. I had told her about that... christmas morning, five and a half years ago now. I had been trying to kill myself, tormented by a diabolical phantom, and my life had been saved when a freak california snowstorm had blocked out the morning sunlight so that it couldn't kill me. A freak snowstorm... that I later thought might have been sent by the Powers that were, to make sure I would survive to carry on their work here in Los Angeles.

It had been Buffy's idea to come up to the top of a tall building and watch the sunrise - and it turned out that the highest one in the city, the US Bank Tower, was in a region where the horde had only done slight damage here and there - the tower itself was almost untouched. Since there was no observation deck, we had snuck up to the roof, next to the helipad, to say our goodbyes.

I've seen the sun come up a few times over the past year - one advantage of having been working for Wolfram and Hart - the glass in their office was specially designed so that sunlight shining through it would not hurt vampires. 'Necro-tempered' was the term that was always used, whatever that meant. But it was completely different to see the first little bit of sun poke above the horizon and realize that there was nothing at all between me and it but air and space, that the light was hitting human skin and human eyes... and Buffy's cell phone beeped at her. She rolled her eyes slightly as I shot her a look, pulling the infernal device out of some mysterious pocket. But she didn't bring the speaker up to her ear, just read some kind of mail off of the tiny little screen.

"News is *still* coming in," she announced to the group at large. "As far as anybody can tell, every Wolfram and Hart branch office across the planet started to crumble and wreck itself, at the same time that Angel stuck his sword through Lykos' heart. Preliminary reports from nearby dimensions indicate that the firm is pulling out and consolidating in more distant realms."

"Heading for the 'high ground' I'd bet," Gunn said, chuckling slightly - and holding his side regretfully with a momentary pain. "The typically darker and more evil worlds, the hell-planes and what have you."

"Wouldn't be surprised," Natasha put in. Although Spike still couldn't come up here without bursting into flames - and Faith and Willow had declined to attend, the two of them, Groo, Aaron, and Virginia had been more than happy to celebrate our victory. Come to think of it... I tucked a few strands of Buffy's hair behind her ear with a simple caress, smiled at her, and went over to have a word with Virginia, who was standing off by herself just slightly.

"I wish I knew of a good enough way to thank you," I told her. "None of this would be possible without you opening the sanctuary to us, and..."

"You really don't need to," she insisted. "After the rebuilding starts, this city will be a much safer place for the people that I care about. That's a reward in and of itself. Plus... well, I got a chance to see Wesley one last time, and to know that he's okay." She took a deep breath. "It's not a chance that many people get."

"I know," I said softly. "He's very proud of you, I think."

Virginia shook her head, red curls shifting as she moved. "What do you mean?"

"Well, the last time he saw you, you... you had lived a very sheltered life for a long time, and you were frightened. For him. It's understandable, and a lot of people stay frightened, to a certain extent, all of their lives. But you've matured so much in just a few years, not just in your confidence, but your involvement in the world around you. You're reaching out to help people who desperately need a kind of order and structure in their lives - like Mattasee."

"Yeah, I guess I am." She smiled. "Any idea what's next for you, after your little Roman holiday?"

"Not really," I admitted, "but I suspect that something interesting will turn up." I looked over at Buffy, who was talking with Natasha and Groo now, and it felt like my heart would burst out of its rib cage. "Excuse me."

"Of course," Virginia said softly, as I crossed over to join them.

"...really pleased to have you back on full-time, for real," Buffy was saying to Natasha as I got there, and I shot her a questioning look. "Natasha's agreed to sign up for re-attached duty, as a full Watcher. Dana's watcher," she explained to me.

"She has a lot of practice looking after psychotic teenagers," Groo added, with a sly joking smile.

"That's great," I said, shaking Natasha's hand in an odd instinct of congratulation. "What about Aaron? Are you going to keep hanging around this area?"

"No, we've talked it over with Aaron, and he really doesn't need me watching over him like a mother hen," she replied. "He understands about as much as I can teach him about his gift and what to do about it. I'm not sure that the Powers will have much to say to him for a little while, at that." She patted Groo's arm. "And we're going to be going down to South America and working with Willow and Kennedy for a little while."

"Cool, I guess," I decided.

"What about you, Gunn?" Aaron put in. "Heading for any glamorous distant destination?"

"Naw, naw, homeboy's goin' back to the hood, 'yo," Gunn shot back. "My old haunts took quite a beating from the horde, and there's plenty of work to be done. Probably going to get back in touch with the old friends, and Anne." He laughed. "Of course, there'll be a lot of money that has to be raised, and Wolfram and Hart's legal know-how could help with that, as long as it doesn't go poof on me again."

"Anything in a good cause," Buffy replied, and then caught sight of something. We all watched as a young man in a uniform came out of the stairway door, wondering if he was going to tell us that we shouldn't be up here.

As it turned out, he didn't have that in mind at all. "Angel, Buffy, Gunn?"

Neither of them spoke up, so I paused a moment and said, "Um, I'm Angel, why? Do I know you?"

"Not at all, sir, but I have a telegram for you." He must have been able to recognize the shock on my face - belatedly I recognized the uniform as that of a delivery company. "From a..." he pulled out the envelope and considered the print on it. "A Krevlurn Swahth?"

Gunn started laughing again, and then coughing, and forced himself to quiet down. "You've got to be joking," I complained to no-one in particular.

The delivery guy must have thought I was saying it to him. "Not at all, sir - if you could please sign here for the message?" Shrugging, I looked at all the fine print on the guy's clipboard, but eventually signed and let him disappear back into the tower, after putting the envelope firmly in my hands. Shrugging it, I opened it, pulled out a piece of paper, and began to read out loud.

"Congratulations, peach puff. I knew that you'd get the job done, but I wasn't sure that I'd be able to make it through the crossfire - hence the quick vamoose. If there was ever a champion vampire with a soul who deserved it, that would be you, and definitely not Spike no matter how cute he is when he starts to pout.

"So again, sorry that I couldn't make your little welcome back to humanity party in person, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we'll meet again - I've always wanted to do a european tour, and maybe this time my promoter won't be a crook like the Vegas guy. Ohh - and don't even bother asking how I knew that you'd be exactly here, right now. A guy's gotta be able to keep a few secrets up his sleeve, doesn't he?

"With all my love and best wishes, Lorne."

There was a bit of a silent moment after that, and then Buffy nudged me softly. "We'd better get going sweetie - the plane'll be ready to take off soon."

I nodded, and said quick final goodbyes to everyone. As we started back down the stairs, I had to ask. "Did you really just call me sweetie?"

"Yeah, I guess I did," she admitted simply.

"I liked the way it sounded," I told her, then added, "darling" just to try it out.

That sounded even better.


End file.
